


Help Me Get Through

by Sing



Series: HeartWork Trilogy [3]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Drama, F/M, Feels, Grief mourning, Healing, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-07-28 14:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 23,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7645042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sing/pseuds/Sing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you love someone</p><p>You put yourself aside.</p><p>You move them forward, you raise them above yourself.</p><p>And hope they'll see you for who you really are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An End Before We Start

**Author's Note:**

> Short start folks sorry!
> 
> Think of it like a little prologue, and then we're ready to hit the road.
> 
> I'm not divulging which way either story goes, just, wanna see you, pick your own roads so to speak. Feel free to abandon one for the other if you so choose, As always, comments are love <3

 

_"Well me you've got wrapped around your finger," he confesses, but there's no guile or teasing in it. "I'd do anything for you"_

_"Stop it."_

_"No, I would."_

_"Why."_

_"I just **would** Abbie. That's another one of those things you just don't have control over." _

* * *

 

She just keeps bawling.

Jenny clutches her, rocking her back and forth.

The only noise in that cave is Abbie, heaving and wracking with shocked sobs, she's shaking with it, can barely breathe.

She never saw it coming, she never hada prayer.

"I'm here, Abbie, I'm--" Jenny bites back a sob of her own. "Here," she gasps, getting a hold of herself. They can't both go to pieces right now. Later, she'll have a proper cry but she'll keep it together now, she can't let Abbie go diving head first into the pool of grief. It's too likely she'll drown.

"No, Jenny, no, why. Why….don't I ever get to keep, anything? Is nothing ever mine?"

"He loved you, more than he understood."

"Then why'd he leave me Jenny, why."

"Because he loved you Abbie. He loved you."

* * *

 

 

Abbie doesn't recognize herself.

There, in the mirror, fully adorned in all black. It's odd she can't remember the last time she was this dressed up. Or else she's just pretending it wasn't recently, in a red ruffled dress.

This dress, in it's modest knee length square neck line, is structured and professional and fits her well. Makes her look polished and put together, the exact opposite of what she is inside. She checks her eyeliner in the mirror---why the hell has she bothered with makeup?---no one is going to mistake her for beautiful on a day like today. Not when her eyes are so puffy from crying all of the night before. Her hair a haphazard bun knotted low on her neck.

"Abbie love?"

 _Lord I beg you deliver me from this,_ she thinks, dabbing her eyes again, straightening her dress.

This is more for them then her. Given the option Abbie would gladly whole herself up with a bottleor two of hard liquor, arm herself with pictures and weep and drink late into the night. And probably half way through the next day. Hell, forever.

"Abbie?"

"Just a minute," she calls back irritably. What is she even supposed to do out there? Say a few words? How he's in a better place?

Lie?

Because there is no better place, than living, breathing, right there, beside her. Another knock. "I'm coming in."

It's Deidre Reynolds. Her would be mother in law."You been crying sweetheart?"

Grief makes her hostile as she answers, "Well what does it look like."

She doesn't even flinch. Doesn't even consider calling Abbie rude. She's the only one who knows Danny had proposed--He'd called her that evening after their impromptu visit with Crane-- Andonly a day after that she had had to call, and tell, his _mother_ , that her son was in a……

car accident?

accidental drowning?

A shoot out attack

 _No,_ she'd thought sadly, remembering the moments in which the cavern had been quiet. After his Love, his…. _valiance,_ Pandora had cursed, had transformed his soul beyond ordinary. 

The box was only ever intended for the eternal soul of a witness. Danny's sacrifice confounded it, thwarted all the rules, broke the immunity. It destroyed the Hidden One and then sucked in Pandora, greedy to take its renewed strength and obliterate all the darkness, and it had rattled there like a pot about to blow.

She'd tried to grab it, still clinging to the dumb hope she could rescue him.

It was Crane that tugged her, screaming and kicking away from the blast, shielding her body with his own. When the ground had settled she'd rocked to her feet, shaken by the explosion, by what Danny had done, by Crane, and she'd ran. She hasn't seen him since.

That

Hah. _That_. was only last week.

* * *

 

_"There was an explosion, Deidre. Danny didn't make it."_

* * *

 

She'd had to tell the woman that his body couldn't be found. That there would be nothing to bury. Lie upon lie upon lie making her sick but she didn't think Mrs. Reynolds would thank her, forsaying her son had gone literally into Pandora's box to save humanity.

So she told her the other part, the closest she could get to the truth without possibly ending up committed. That he'd saved her life when he did it.

A Hero's death.

A version his mother could handle. A story the family could keep and be proud, that their beloved Danny, had been on some, top secret high ranking mission, when he threw his Agent, coincidentally, his love, out of harms way, and died.

Deidre watches her calmly, working her mouth.

She's met the woman before, three times total. They were always pleasant. But there hadn't been time for great family gatherings and deep level bonding. Without Danny to bind them they're virtual strangers. Almost family. Sewn together by grief.

"Wipe your eyes hon. Come on." she gives Abbie a little nod and holds the door open.

"I'm sorry," she rasps as she walks past her. "For going off like that,"

"Grief doesn't have manners." Deidre says calmly, eyes warm with understanding and unshed tears. God Bless this woman being strong for her, when she's the one who's lost a son. "Come on, say something for the last."

She starts to crumble again but Deidre holds her. "I'll go up with you. Child stop, crying," she protests before giving in to bawling too.

"I'm sorry," Abbie babbles into her arms. "I'm so sorry."

"It wasn't your fault," Deidre whispers, hurriedly wiping her own eyes. "Not yours, baby. Not yours."

_Yes. it. is._

She turns the ring still on her finger.

Because he loved me.

Too much.


	2. Am I Being Clear

Deep breath. It takes all her strength not to wobble and teeter in her heels when she goes up to the front. She looks out at the gathering. So many questioning unfamiliar eyes; Danny came from a large family. There are people here she's never met. Jenny and Joe sit at the front. Ezra, who she'd begun to build a tentative relationship with on Danny's insistence sidles in at the back. Beside him is Crane, unrecognizable for a moment in a proper, modern cut suit. She wonders fleetingly who volunteered as tribute for the task of getting him outfitted. He tried calling the house, once or twice. From where she doesn't know. She doesn't know where he's been staying, what he's been doing. She's surprised he's here. After all she told him they didn't need him here.

_"I have a good, **good** man in my life Crane."_

Maybe he's here to gloat that her good man hadn't proven to be all that hardy. Seeing him there, she wants to storm down these little marble steps, haul him outside into the rain---and she's not pleased it's raining, trying to inspire life to grow---and ask him why the hell did he let Danny take the fall for a job that was supposed to be theirs. It should have been him, it should have been them.

Not. Danny.

Not Danny, who grew up in the city with his loving mother and father, the pride and joy of the Reynolds family. Not, Danny, who all he'd ever wanted to do was keep people safe, and he could have done that being a regular person if he hadn't gotten tangled up with her.

And that wouldn't have damning well happened, if Crane had stayed, and kept being the time consuming obstacle and stumbling block in her path he was meant to be. All Crane had to do, was stay, and there wouldn't have been time, for her to entertain going back to her dreams, there wouldn't have been time, for her to try to find a life, friendships, people, outside of them, and she would never have met Danny, and he'd still be alive.

She wrestles with that bout of anger as shetries to find something resembling composure. For Danny. He was so strong and there for her, the least she can do, is speak her heart, in front ofall these people who loved him, with dignity. To tell them, clearly and heartfelt, that yes, Danny was a hero, with morals, goals, dreams, loyalty. Honest, caring, funny……

"He loved to dance," she laughs a little, wiping a tear from her eye. "Don't ask me how the man could dance so well when he had no ear for music at all. And he couldn't cook," she says off handedly, and more than one family member laughed fondly. It seems Abbie and Jenny were not the only ones who had eaten Danny's abominable cooking. "But you know I ate it anyway? I used to make him cook with me, because, Danny did everything all in. Cooking horrible meals, dancing, his job. Loving me." she bites her lips together. "Daniel Reynolds, did a **_damned good job_ ,** of Loving me. And I'm not an easy person to get along with" she looks down and turns the ring. " He asked me to marry him and I said yes. I'll be honest with you, it was strange. It scared me, but Danny has been so there, for me, I knew, we could make it together. He'd be there beside me…… _He should **still** be here beside me_ ….."

_Oh God Danny_

"I loved him. It crept up on me, it frightened me, but I loved him. I loved him!" _Oh_ **_Danny_** , "He went above and beyond in taking care of me. When I had it rough, when I broke down, he would hold me, he would make me talk it out he would……"

 _I'm sorry_. She thinks as her facade falls, cracks, splinters in front of everyone and the dam breaks. She can hear her own crying and sniffles echoing. Her tears make neat little spots on the floor A sorrowful constellation. "He, he would wrap his arms, around me, and say ' _I've got you babe'_ "

There are so many silently weeping faces, holding one another and nodding. Yes, they all know what kind of man, Danny was. His deep level of care.

She reaches to touch the picture of his face. She takes a moment there. She doesn't know how many, staring into the deep warm chocolate eyes that even from a picture still make her heart flutter. She presses her fingers to her lips and then back to him. "I've got _you_ , Danny." she whispers. Tapping her chest, her heart. "Right here. I've got you. _Always_. I love you. I love you. "

When she looks back out at the crowd her eyes lock with Cranes at the back. As if daring him to even think, he had any place there.

Daring him to dream there could ever be room.

At the end, she leaves with Jenny on one side, Joe and Ezra on the other and he trails behind before a woman bustles out behind them. "You're coming sweet heart, aren't you?"

"To, what." Abbie sniffles.

"Small dinner here…..at Daniel's place….for the last"

Abbie blinks and prays for rescue of some sortfrom this but her party has already begun to steer her toward the car where Deidre leads them, they pile her in with Jenny, Joe and Crane in the truck, Ezra takes Jenny's car.

"The family wants to meet you." Deidre says. "Be there for you too. You did…..thank you, for saying everything you did up there."

"Only the truth." she replies numbly. "Only the truth."

* * *

 

There was a surreal moment in which time had frozen. He was reaching for Abbie, to push her out of the way when he was bowled over by Reynolds who subsequently had thrown Abbie aside too. The box had reached for him, to Pandora's dismay, something about his sacrifice and love surpassing his mortality and----But Danny had looked back on them for just a moment, wincing, to see he hadn't been as careful as he ought to with Abbie but meeting eyes with Crane.

He'd nodded at him. Given him a salute.

"Crane."

Wind shrieking in his ears and eyes wide as he tried to scramble forward to stop him. Danny merely shook his head and said again instead, "Crane."

"Step away from the box Master Reynolds---!"

"Crane!" and he was already vanishing, wisps disappearing into the box.Pandora's screaming in the back ground. "Take care of my girl!"

" ** _Master Reynolds!_** "

" ** _Take care of Abbie!_** "

And he was gone.

* * *

 

Crane looks out the window, thinking of Abbie's passionate speech for her deceased love. The task Daniel Reynolds had charged him with.

The way she had glared at him across the room.

He tries to find hope.

Tries. 


	3. A Fall

Alone.

At last she is alone. After being hugged and kissed to death and several member of the Reynolds family wanting to exchange numbers and promising to drop by before they left town---she never once asked any of them too---and she hopes that over the course of the next few days she'll find it in herself to be grateful for their compassion and company when they barely knew her. But they'd taken one look at the ring on her finger and held her and wept and then kept insisting she try to eat, just a bite.

Well aftersomewhere in the ball park of fifteen people tell you 'just a bite' you've wound up eating a whole damn lot more than you could stomach. She'd gotten away just barely long enough for a drink, something a little stronger, in Danny's cabinets. Some bottle of stuff she hadn't cared enough to take when she'd been by the house a few days before.

Some might think it unseemly but Abbie had been sleeping there some nights. Letting herself in with her spare key, tossing most of the food out the fridge---cooking it would have been less wasteful but she had no appetite---and settling herself in with Danny's favourite drinks, even though she didn't love them all that much. Burned on the way down, used to make her cough and splutter, and he would laugh as he gingerly lifted a glass out of her hands, saying, always affectionately, always joking, "Just this once Mills, these aren't your speed," Given the fact Abbie was a hardy no nonsense woman who had taken her turn more than once with a bottle, a liquor that could scare her…..that's saying something.

The first night, when she'd ran from the cavern she'd gone straight here. Stripped off her clothes, bathed in his body wash and put on one of his shirts. Went back downstairs and grabbed a glass, sat there at the counter, twitching so hard she lost her grip and it had shattered. She'd stepped on glass that night, slicing her foot. An injury that had pulsed like a gentle reminder what a foolish idea it had been to wear heels.

Bloody weepy and a little tipsy she knew she probably shouldn't be alone but could't bring herself to call Jenny, Joe, anyone to come help her, to look after her.

Danny was supposed to do that.

They called her though, she'd mustered something approximating calm and cool, saying she just wanted to be alone tonight. No, it's okay. Please don't come over. The less time she has to spend sharing the more of him she can keep.

Such an odd thing, when only days ago she was thinking of clinging to the painful turbulence of her…..what the hell you call it with Ichabod Crane. Nothing like a little death for perspective.

But tonight after the memorial she cannot seek refuge there among remnants of Danny's habitat, cannot wallow in the memories, no, because, and it's uncharitable to think, but the whole damn convention of them are still over there, trading stories, tears. It had been a tremendous effort to wade through the lot of them to leave, hissing for Jenny and the others to follow. Even Crane, like a silent phantom.

They dropped her off at her house.

Too large. She thinks, looking up at it. Damn thing was always too large and she should never have deigned to think she could fill it with something. What does someone like her, so small, so isolated, like an island, have to entice good fortune and weather and blooming in a space that big? What had she been thinking?

They escorted her to the door, two on each side, flanking her like some VIP and it takes everything not to be irritable with them. It's not their fault. She knows that. But all she has is anger inside and there are bound to be casualties to it. No, she insists at the door, she's fine.

"Abbie you shouldn't be alone." Jenny begs. "Please? just me? I'll be quiet."

Abbie snorts. "You, quiet? Like hell. I'm fine, Jenny."

"Who are you trying to impress? You're gonna creep in there and go to pieces you might as well do it while there's someone to hand you some tissues." Jenny's tone is biting. Her sisters stubbornness can work anyone's nerves.

"I was just gonna blow my nose in my own clothes, anyway, Jenny." she retorts.

"Abbie please." she tries again, changing tact. She grips the door, rolling her eyes, praying for patience before she hears Crane speak up.

"She's had a very….trying day, Miss Jenny. The Reynolds gathering was…..not a….calming atmosphere. You know how your sister hates fuss."

Jenny swivels her head to look at Crane, eyebrow raised, opening her mouth perhaps to quarrel but shuts it. She looks back to Abbie. "Really?"

Abbie rolls her eyes "Yes Jenny you know how I hate _fuss_ " she emphasizes, as if taunting Crane. _I hate people making out like they care about me, is that what you told yourself? Is that what made you think, oh, I'd better go without a word, because I know_ _how she hates, **'fuss**_ ' "But yes, please just, go, I'll call you in the morning."

"I'll be _here_ in the morning," Jenny fires back. "To check on you."

"Fine." She grunts, and then, "Thank you."

They all turn to leave with final embraces, except Crane, who walks to the end of the driveway, observing their parting. But she can feel his eyes on her the whole time, which is all the more satisfying when she slams the door behind her, not once looking back.

* * *

 

 

She sits in bed with the most recent picture of her and Danny anda bottle. She doesn't have company so why bother with glasses. Her body is too warm her head is humming. Silent tears stream down her face. She takes of the ring and examines it between her fingers. Kisses it. She screams and hurtles the bottle against her bedroom wall.

Danny went back on his word too, in the end.

He left her.

* * *

 

The doorbell.

 _Screw it_. She thinks, turning over in the bed, she's not answering.

It keeps going.

Groggily she rolls over, squints at the window. It's raining again. Outside is grey gloom. Her head, is _pounding._

They've given up on the door bell and are just full out banging on the door. There's yelling too---"damn it." she mutters, staggering carefully out of the bed, passing a disproving glance at the bottle she shattered night before, she doesn't need another injury, no doubt they'll want one of them to start staying with her. "What Jenny," she demands grasping the door.

But it's not Jenny. It's not Joe. She heaves a sigh. "Hey, dad."

"Beat your sister huh."

"Yeah you did." she says, stepping aside, and clutching the neck of one of Danny's shirts closed. "I don't know why people think it's a good idea to crowd the grieving. You can't get any proper mourning done." she grumps as she moves sluggishly toward the kitchen to make coffee.

"For a lot of people proper mourning means comes dangerously close to joining the ones they've lost, if left alone." Ezra says meaningfully and Abbie glares at him.

"I'm not about to harm myself alright, I don't need baby sitters."

"No but the way you smell you're gonna need AA soon. You been drinking this early?"

Another glare. "No." Just all of last night. "Jenny still headed over"

"She is, with that boyfriend of hers," he cocks his head to the side. "And that, Crane fellow, too."

She slams the mug down too hard. "What"

"He's staying in Joe's old apartment. Joe at Jenny's. Who is he Abbie."

"No one, im-por-tant." she shoves a mug at him and then begins tearing into a bag of bread. She's not hungry but having her mouth full will stop her from cussing.

Ezra eyes her. "I see."

"Jenny tell you?"

"What about?"

"This, Witness nonsense I'm caught up in."

"She may have mentioned it."

"Well there's supposed to be two. I'm Witness Two," she coos, biting into another chunk. And Ezra fills in the blank.

"Ahh. Been gone for a bit."

An understatement. "Look dad I'm not getting into it. Alright? No offence but I don't want none of you here today. Or maybe the day after that. But I'll tolerate you the way I'm gonna have to tolerate---" the door bell. She pinches the bridge of her nose to answer the door, prepared to give her sister a poor greeting but chokes on her mouthful.

"Mrs. Reynolds," she swallows. Deidre hefts a dish in her hand.

"I figured you'd need to eat. Boy hurry up with that bag." She peers around Deidre's shoulder and to her shock there is Jenny and Joe coming in behind the Reynolds Matriarch. And Crane, lugging a grocery bag. "Come on. Come on," Deidre says, bustling Abbie out the way as she leads this small parade inside her house with breakfast casserole and groceries spilling out the top. When Abbie strolls back into the kitchen, dazed, she catches her fathers eyes.

He mouths to her, "I wanted to warn you"

She makes an incredulous face. "Well you did a good job!"

Deidre, kind and oblivious, or deliberately ignoring Abbie's discomfort puts an arm around her. "Why don't you go upstairs and get cleaned up, hmm?"

"Deidre,"

"Won't be long. Just want to see you clean and fed. Go ahead. Where are your plates?"

"To the left," Abbie replies dumbly, taking in her kitchen that suddenly feels too small for the amount of bodies in here. Jenny finishes with coffee, Joe is heating Deidre's dish, Crane dutifully packing the food away in the fridge. "I'll…..I'll be right back"

* * *

 

She's in and out the shower in record time, changes quickly and eases back down the staircase and is just trying to slip by the kitchen when Crane comes around the corner, presumably to call her down for the meal. He meets her eyes, sees the way her fingers reach for the front door tentatively, and strides forward and opens it wide, beckoning for her to pass. Her gaze lingers on him as she crosses the threshold but then she's pounding down the driveway, running, running running. The rain is still coming but let it.

With her face so wet no one will see if she cries.

"Crane?" Jenny calls, coming out into the hall way. "What are you doing?"

"Just getting some air, Miss Jenny," he says, pulling the door shut, after having watched Abbie take off down the pavement, turning the corner out of sight. "It felt stuffy in here."

"Is Abbie down yet?" Deidre calls.

Crane answers before Jenny can. "I believe I heard water running, she may still be in the shower."

It's another fifteen minutesbefore Jenny gets fed up, headsupstairs to find it deserted and comes streaming back down the stairs, panting, "She's gone"

* * *

 

Soaked through Abbie collapses on the bank of the river, head in her hands, breathing too hard.

_What're you doing Mills._

_Missing you, Danny._ She begins to take off her shoes.

 _What're you doing, Mills._ The voice persists.

"Missing you, Danny." She begins to creep closer to the edge.

_What're you doing Abs._

_Don't sweat me babe I'm just taking a swim._

**_Abbie!_ **

_I miss you is all. I miss you._

* * *

 

The all split up, Jenny and Joe to the Bureau. Ezra to the archives, Deidre back to Danny's house. Crane jogs down the path he saw her take last, and from there just keeps guessing turns, doubling back in some cases in panic until he sees her. His heart leaps into his throat. He breaks into a run.

_I told you to take care of my girl, Crane._

"Leftenant!"

She turns and slips.

And falls in.


	4. Not Enough Rescue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chap but quick updates? fair trade? 
> 
> your thoughts as always are a guiding light.

 

_What the hell are you doing Mills_

_I wasn't trying to kill myself Danny I was just going for a swim_

_By the **river** , he roars in disbelief. **Alone, in the rain, hungover?**_

_Well I didn't say it was a good idea. But I mean it, I wasn't trying to die Danny._

_You tell the folk at the hospital that one_

* * *

 

 

He'd learned CPR while he was away. He doesn't understand how it had taken him so long but it was one of the things he made sure to figure out, along with a general refresher on modern first aide, what to do if someone was choking etc. When he hauled her up out of the water this time, he knew what to do, pumping on her chest and she coughed, spluttered water, blinked disoriented eyes up at him before gasping and clutching her stomach.

That's when he noticed there was blood.

"Abbie," He wraps his long limbs around her, holding her as she begins to shiver, shrugging awkwardly out of his coat and draping it around her, brushing wet strands back from her forehead and fumbling in  his pocket for the phone and dialled. "Miss Jenny? We're by the river. Yes, I have her. Miss Jenny no time for that she----she fell in---yes she's breathing--- _blast it_ Jenny I'm taking her to the hospital. She's been injured"

* * *

 

 

Rocks, a big nasty one that she'd crashed into when she fell in. Caught her abdomen and legs. She'll have bruises to show for it later. And something else.

Everything hurts.

_Live, Abs. Like a job, remember what we talked about?_

_That was your job too, where do you get off being a hero._

_All I know is don't come this way again Abbie._

_I'll come that way again as much as I like if it means I get to see you._

_I'll **keep** you if you do. he threatens.Try me. Come back this way and I won't let you go._

_You made that promise before and broke it._

_I can't help what I did for love, Abs._

_Even breaking my heart?_

* * *

 

 

Groggily she opens her eyes and how absurd is it that her first thought is 'Geez what a crowd' Ezra, Jenny, Joe, Crane, Deidre and who called Sophie Foster but they're all there, gathered bedside, Jenny slapping Joe's arm frantically when she sees Abbie's eyes open. Noise, a lot of noise as they all press closer to speak to her and whisper gratitude and short little furious accusations. Forget about convincing the hospital staff, she had to convince her family first that she didn't need to be put on watch.

"Give her space." the doctor instructs as she comes in. "One at a time." she says, passing her gaze over all of them, waiting for them to decide who gets first visit. Jenny's about to claim the spot before Crane makes a show of flinging out his coat and depositing himself in the chair bedside, drawing it closely and then looking expectantly up at the physician. He can feel the Mills sister glaring daggers at him but Joe gently turns her away out the door and the rest follow suit behind.

"You are?" the doctor starts, putting out her hand to shake.

"Ichabod Crane."

An inquisitive glance.

"Fanciful parents." he quips.

"Who are you to Miss Mills?"

"Her partner." he answers dutifully, it's unclear if he understands the possible connotations of that label but the doctor merely nod and then leans slightly on the table, face crestfallen. "Well it's best that it's just the two of you in here then." She takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Abbie's lying flat down her back and has to angle her head strangely to meet eyes with the woman. Who told her about Danny? "Crane" she croaks, and he leans impossibly close. If she had the strength she would have made a vocal demand to have anyone else bedside at the moment but him but she'll make do. "Did you tell, them? About Danny?"

Crane looks at her carefully, then back at the doctor. The longer the two exchange looks she feels as though she's being kept out of a secret. "You were with child, Miss Mills."

Something like a vortex opens up inside her. "I was, what?"

"Pregnant, Abbie." The doctor says, gently, with such tenderness and sorrow in her eyes.

She can't absorb this information quickly enough, she can't make sense of what she had and then lost. They're puzzle pieces that don't fit right.She turns her head to Crane, beseeching.

"They ran tests…..when you came in. You struck your abdomen in your fall…..you were pregnant Abbie," he curls his fingers over the bars, reaching to take her hand in his. "And…..and now, now, you're not."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kay, I SWEAR, I'm not gonna tear you up next chapter. Or at least I'll make up for it. Promise.


	5. Here To Stay

Cold.

She feels very cold. It's like theres ice in her veins. They keep heaping hot blankets on her because she won't stop shivering. The others have come and gone visiting with her, Crane relaying the news over and over again likethe broken record from hell.

It's like being stuck in a cursed rerun. It all goes the same. They come in, _fuss_ over her. We were so worried. What were you thinking. So glad you're okay. You can't follow him---to which she almost always wanted to reply "I will if I want to"----and then Crane tells them, "She miscarried, Mrs. Reynolds."

"She had a miscarriage, Mr. Mills."

She didn't know devastating news could sound so measured and controlled and eloquent until she'd heard Crane deliver her personal tragedy at least five times, each time as if it were the first. And they all looked at her, and raised a hand to their mouth, or gasped, or both, and their brows pinched in the centre, corners of their mouths turning down, hands heavy on her shoulder, lips dragging across her forehead whispering I'm sorries and more condolences on top of what she has already suffered.

The predictability of each visit is almost comical, she has to restrain herself from laughing, or at least that's what she tells herself she was trying to do before she made some strange gurgling sound and her face crumpled into tears.

On top of which when they're all gone he tells her they intend to keep her for observation. For what, is what she would have asked if he didn't keep barreling along in his explanations, citing of all things because she was found at the river. She wants to tell him, this man that is her destruction embodied, that she only fell in because he spooked her there on the edge, that no, she honestly wasn't trying to do herself harm.

No, it wasn't particularly well thought out, but she's always felt calmer after a good swim. And the house was crowded there with all of them, impinging on what should have been her sanctuary. Yes it was raining yes she was still hungover but she never meant…..and she certainly would never even have thought it, had she known.

_Oh, Danny. Forgive me, please._

Her last bit of him, gone. There and then not. Her mind had raced to this thought so quickly any instinct she may have had to get into it with Crane dissolved and left her in silent tears. He didn't leave her bedside though she sorely wanted to demand he do so. But that required so much more energy than she had.

* * *

 

 

The next day, when Jenny visits she all but growls for Crane to leave the room. She's had a nights fitful sleep and has slightly more energy to knock heads with her sister about the hospital keeping her for observation. "To observe what"

Jenny raises a brow.

"I must be talking to myself. To observe what, Jenny."

Jenny just keeps looking at her, chewing the inside of her cheek.

"Look I know what you're thinking but it's damn Crane's fault I fell in, I was just going----"

"Going for a swim." Jenny parrots back in a tone that sounds vaguely like mockery. "It's not just that, Abbie." she grouches, shifting in the chair and levelling her eyes at her sister. "Some other things too."she licks her lips and leans forward in the chair. "Deidre, Mrs. Reynolds, she says Danny's fridge was empty. That, she found some glass splinters there night before his memorial." The glass she broke, she could have sworn she'd swept it all away. 

Abbie stares straight ahead. "Neighbours said they have seen you going over there Abbie."

"Damn nosey---you gossip with them now?"

"They knew it was you. They didn't see a point in calling police."

"So who did they tell?" Abbie demands.

"Deidre, when she asked if they had a spare key, explain why most of his toiletries have gone missing. Odd things for a thief to take." Jenny says.

Abbie bites her lips. Sucks in her cheeks. "What, what are you glaring at me like that for? I wanted his scent, okay?"

"I know."

"That's all it was. I can't be strong Mills all the time, right?" she asks, beginning to fracture, seeing how pathetic she must have seemed to the neighbours who'd seen her sneaking in, to Deidre learning she'd absconded with her sons colognes and bodywash. "I'm allowed to have a few screws loose, I lost him Jenny and on top of that I lost our, our,"

"Sssh." Jenny moves quickly to her side, petting her hair.

"Them." she sobs. "Ours. All I had left, gone." she sniffles. "And why, because….of some stupid, stupid coping mechanism but damnit Crane startled me. He's the reason this happened. He came back and I lose Danny I lose our child and now they…..they have me on watch now, is that it?"

"They're setting you up with a counsellor." Jenny concedes. "I'm not going to fight with you about it Abbie you're going."

"I hate you. I hate you, I hate those neighbours, and I hate Crane."

"Love you more." Jenny replies.

* * *

 

They released her last week, but only under the condition that there would always be someone there with her. They'd all chimed in quickly, as eager for Abbie to be back home as she was, that between all of them there wouldn't be a minute she'd be alone. Which didn't sound at all appealing to her, but she was tired of hospital mush and being in that constantly, visibly vulnerable position day and night with the recurring horror of losing something that could have been precious, they might have had his eyes, his kind half smile. She heard Danny's voice at night, telling her over and over to live, live live. And she dreamed that she was always telling him she wasn't trying to waste his efforts, but she hadn't realized how much she'd needed him. Where she had been strong, he'd made her stronger. Where she was soft, he'd made her softer. She dared to be raw and open with him, and that rawness now seems like a ragged gaping whole, where all she feels is Danny's absence. And apologies, whispered teary apologies for being so unwittingly reckless. But the doctors had told them, no, they need a signature and contact information of someone who would be there, around the clock, twenty four seven, and that had left only one person who had no conflicts whatsoever.

Ichabod Crane.

* * *

 

Abbie's out on the porch taking a long drag of her cigarette. Gives her something to do with her hands, gives her an excuse to stand outside alone, no matter the weather. The door creaking open behind her lets her know Crane has emerged. They've been strange roommates since they'd all helped move his meagre belongings into her guest room. He makes her meals that she doesn't eat. Cleans up things she breaks. Doesn't speak unless spoken too. A caregiver. The babysitter she never wanted. Hands her tissues and lets her curse and rail at him until she's tired. He's just there, watchful eyes, a silent hovering shadow. Always at her side, but so much less than what they once were.

"Miss Mills."

She looks askance at him over her shoulder.

"Miss Mills I was not aware you smoked."

She barks a laugh and takes another inhale, holds it in, releases it. "Started a while ago. Come to think of it," she taps her bottom lip thoughtfully, "Shortly after you left. Right about then," she winks, turning back around.

She'd been stressed by his leaving, it had left her frayed edges and questioning and anxiety. Grief, anxiety, who'd have thought the over grown relic had become such a comfort over the years? Security?

Well she felt his departure like someone yanking the blanket away in the middle of winter. It was Danny, who'd caught her once during training who'd wheedled she should stop. She'd ignored him, of course, had kept on until she got back to Sleepy Hollow, had wracked herself up to a pack a day with Pandora surfacing and then Danny being her boss? Yeah, not for the faint of heart, andher lungs seemed a fair sacrifice to cope. But She was trying to make herself quit by the time she'd stepped into that tree. And Danny had made damn sure she'd stopped when she got back from the Catacombs.

She stopped being so frenetic and stressed with Danny there. It hadn't been that hard to quit.

But this. Stress and fear and pain, they're all cousins to each other, you can sort of remedy them the same way. So here she is again. Second cig of the day. 

"Had me pulling my hair out wondering what happened to you," she mutters briefly. "Hell if I know if you thought of me."

"Everyday."

She stubs it out and turns to face him, leaning on her railing. "You can't help yourself can you, ruining my life? Well I can't seem to help but let you." She begins tapping the pack to shake out another one when he grabs it out of her hands, stuffing it in his trouser pocket, shuffling off the coat and slinging it over her. She stands still as he pushes the coffee he'd come out with in her hands.

"Thank you," she says grudgingly.

"It's the least I can do, Abbie."

She shudders and closes her eyes as she takes a sip. "You can always do more. After what you've put me through. Don't think I'm going to lean on you because I'm in pain. Made that mistake once."

"I'll do whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to help you through this Abbie. To be there for you".

" _Hah._ You must plan on being here a helluva long time."

"Eternity," he replies calmly. "Eternity"


	6. My Many Volatile Shades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Abbie is a volatile mess. 
> 
> This went dark. Apologies. Upping the rating now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment! 1) so i know your thoughts 2) so you can give me a proper thrashing if this was awful.

"You blame Mr. Crane." the therapist, Doctor Shauna Lin peers over her glasses. She knew this would be a bad idea. A therapist? For things she's seen in her life? As if she can mention any of it and not find herself instantly committed? All she can real say is Crane was around all the time and he left without saying so. And now she's being very unforgiving. It sounds tawdry paraphrased down to that and she loathes every minute sheis sitting here.

Outside Crane, JennyEzra and Deidre pace. Deidre has been coming by with food and momentos, pictures of Danny as a kid,a scrapbook. When Abbie's not being inhospitable to Crane she is silently thankful to Deidre---even though she doesn't like having people around---Deidre is warm and quiet, they talk about Danny, which is honestly all Abbie wants to talk about, and hug and sometimes she leans on the woman's shoulder for a long time, with Deidre humming a lullaby she used to sing to Danny as a child.

Abbie can't count how many times she'd tried to apologize for losing the woman's grandchild before Deidre had glared at her, "Your life, you being right here is what I'm grateful for," and then softening. "Maybe it just wasn't meant to be."

At some point Crane would bustle in with tea. "Heaven help me tea time already?" Deidre would tease and his ears would turn pink.

Don't ask Abbie why but Mrs. Reynolds seems to have taken a liking to Crane, which only further incenses her. If she knew how this man had tried to cross the lines, Abbie doubts she'd be charmed by him. He likes her too, that's the other thing,preening under her praise.

Abbie has the irksome suspicion that he might have started viewing Deidre like a mother figure, and her seeing Crane like a son.

Frankly, Abbie firmly believes they'd have more to discuss on this chaise with Dr. Lin than she does.

"Yes."

"For everything."

"Right down to world hunger and poverty." she grumbles. Dr. Lin regards her seriously for all of a minute before her mouth quirks.

"You're holding back on me Abbie. What's really going on with you."

"You don't got enough time in the day."

"You think I got into this profession because I like fast results?"

Abbie can't help but chuckle. "You want me to get into it?"

"As much as you see fit. You hold a lot against Crane for leaving. Why."

"Because he wasn't supposed to! He said he'd be there so he should have damn well, been there."

"Why."

"What do you mean why, to keep his word. To be there for me. So we could, look out for one another, be there for each other, take care---protect, each other."

"Protect is a strong word."

"There's a lot of evil in the world."

"But at some point you managed before him. Who protected you then?"

"No one. Myself."

"As a child, Abbie."

" _No one. My-self_." she pauses. "Mama, and Daddy, before she went off the rails, before he left. Time in my mind is so brief it's like it was never there, really."she shifts on the chaise, tugging her sleeves. "Look you aren't gonna sit here and turn my issues with Crane around on my mama and daddy. I dealt with that. I know I have issues with that, letting people in, you think you're the first person going down that road with me? Got news for you Doc. You're not that special."

Dr. Lin folds her arms and leans back in the chair.

"My problem with Crane is; I know my issues, He knew them, and he still did it. Still hurt me. Knows what my past did to me and how I had to put myself back together with help from one God send of a man. Hell I met Crane when I lost my mentor August Corbin. It was like, some sort of trade," she laughs. "Lose Corbin, get Crane. He took over that vacant space at my side. He filled it. Became, my friend, my confidante, my everything."

She goes still.

She just said that, out, loud.

Lin watches her with interest.

"My-my everything." she continues in a stammer "Don't ask me what that really means, I didn't then and I still don't. But he was, and….something, happened between us, he saved my life, really, and then he was, not here anymore. This was over a year ago. And he shows up, couple weeks ago, last month maybe? Day after I told……" her words peter out.

"Water?"

"Please." she takes the offered cup and drains it, sets it down on the table and ruffles her hair. "Daniel Reynolds that I'd marry him. Daniel Reynolds loved me. Without cause, without reason. He saw me and, I saw him. We had a fling in training, something Ibrushed off because I was coming back home, here, to Sleepy Hollow. What a kick in the teeth for him to transfer here as my boss. That made for an interesting dynamic in the workplace…….but we kept it together, mostly. There was always tension there because, to him I'd ended something that wasn't finished. Back in the winter……" I _walked into a mystical tree and travelled dimensions, no best not go that route._ "Back in the winter I got really sick and Danny came to take care of me. Really took care of me. I asked him to stay, he asked me to let him in, so I did. Well I understood why he had thought we weren't finished before because we weren't. Danny," she blinks her eyes shut, squeezing back tears. "Danny, oh no no no I said I wouldn't damning well cry" she hisses, dabbing at her eyes. "I fell for him without trying. He was there for me, protected me, armed me, made sure I took care of myself, first and foremost. He passed recently."

"He left."

"Yeah." Abbie gasps. "Yeah he did. And then there's Crane, come back and still……he wants to be there now but I just don't know if I dare let anyone this close again. It hurts too much. And I haven't forgive him. I'd sooner give him hell"

Lin sits up in her seat, checking her watch. "Same time, next week Miss Mills. You made good progress today. Just bare in mind something you told me about Danny."

"You said he made sure you took care of yourself. You should keep doing that in memory of him, don't you think?"

* * *

 

They all took her to a diner after for lunch. Like a child you reward for being good at the doctors

* * *

He's not sure how she keeps getting cigarettes, if she had a stash that she just hadn't been touching, but every pack he tosses she seems to find another.

And with that cuddling up with a bottle. A glass in one hand, cigarette lit in the other, a perfumed cloud that smells disconcertingly male, he assumes it's Reynolds body wash. He wonders vaguely if it would comfort her if he started to cook badly and wear suits.

She took two bites of dinner before she'd grabbed the bottle, a glass, bumped the back door open and had gone out into the cool evening. He joins her, of course he does, but at a distance. Giving her space.

"You ever gonna get a job," she asks. Inhale, release. Flummoxed he begins to fumble for words.

"I don't need you to change diapers for me so you better look for a job. Rent's due the first."

"Rent?"

"You said you're gonna stay right?" a sip, another drag. "Eternity?"

"Yes---"

"Eternity ain't cheap." she cuts him off, tapping the end and looking up at the sky. "You know I just gotta wonder what you thought you would get out of coming back here."

"Pardon?" Crane blinks. He's so unused to conversation the way she's been treating him lately it's as if he's forgotten how to hold up his end.

She turns, folding one leg beneath her. She's wearing an oversized collared shirt, and maybe or maybe not shorts underneath. It's long enough to not matter. Her hair is down. Her eyes a little faraway. "Tell me Crane." she purrs. "When you woke up, I'll give you that, six months you didn't account for, alright, that's your grace, tell me, when you woke up," she smiles in a way that doesn't seem like she's smiling at all, "and you thought 'Dear God, I've left the Leftenant alone' what did you think would happen when you got here? hmmm?"

"That we, we would, resume our mission---"

"Resume our mission," she says, overlapping him, nodding. "That the only mission you had? no mission to me? There was something cooking in that head of yours, rattling around under all that pretty hair" and she reaches forward so suddenly the movement shocks him as she brushes a lock away from his forehead "---good to know you had time for a hair cut before you made it back here, by the way---I mean you pulled that stunt you did on our way back from the catacombs. When you kissed me."

She turns over now, resting on her knees, she shuts one eye and squints at him, before draining her glass. "You're here, up in my house everyday, like you could ever do what he did for me. This house, this damn house, that guest room in there? it was always yours." she nods, laughing a little to herself. "Mhmm! it was! Thought of you when I got it. 'For when he gets back'" she snickers. She begins to shuffle towards him and Crane subconsciously begins to take a step back. "For when he comes home. I thought I was home, eh? can you believe it? phew!" she pinches the shirt away from her skin, fanning herself. "But you think, you can, like Danny, make me feel better? give me refuge? a safe place? You want his clothes, Crane? You want his cologne and spray? I bet you're the same shoe size," she teases wickedly. " I could make you my doll. Take me dancing Crane, you wanna take me dancing? We can do the salsa. It's where you move your hips. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"Leftenant."

"Would you?"

"I would do anything if it gave you joy, gave you peace"

"Make a damn fool of your self trying to fill in for a man who cared for me before he understood I was broken. Who stayed when he learned I was, who held me together the way you should have. Held me. Loved me, _deeply truly loved me._ Kissed me, oh, Danny kissed me," she leaps suddenly, grabbing for Crane's shirt and he's so taken aback by her sudden agility he stumbles, trips, and falls. Before he can register what's happening Abbie is straddling him, draping her arms across his shoulders.

"You thought, maybe, you would come back here, and make your vows. Always, forever. And I would either have been in a pit lost without you, or doing fine, but you'd come back, pick up where you left off, right? Right," she takes another pull, releases it slowly, "And eventually, one night, you'd have me, here, right? This what you were hoping? When you kissed me in those Catacombs you thought you had a chance to turn my head then. That you would call and I would answer, and you'd get to have me here," she rolls her hips against him and his body betrays him. "You didn't have to go away for all of that, Crane. You could have stayed here, I'd have given it to you, had you stayed, right here. This is where you want me isn't it? This is what you want. For us to be close, like this?" She leans her forehead against his, reaches for one of his hands, guiding it to her waist, "sharing space? I wanted it too, you know." she ghosts her lips across his and she feels him trembling. "I've been missing Danny. Is that sick? This is sick what I'm doing to you, isn't it? Well I'm a little sick, Crane. Will be for a while." she leans in again, lips brushing his own, and she grabs his chin as she kisses him, and he can't help himself, he kisses back. She breaks away for air. "This could have been _us_ Crane! this! Don't you want this?" she asks, pressing closer against him and its a wicked taunt.

"Not like this," he manages to get out, a great feat, because he recognizes what she's doing out of anger, grief and sorrow. Lashing out at him, taunting him, and he won't give in to it. As if she needs more reasons to dislike him.Instantly she switches gears, her eyes bright with clarity and a simmering anger he must have been a _fool_ to miss. She grabs his collar, pulling him close so they're nose to nose.

"You gone take me how you can get me or not at all," and she pitches him away, gets to her feet, and goes inside.

Rumpled, breath heaving, Crane scrambles for the bottle she left behind, says a small prayer of thanks before he turns it over and takes a long drink.

And then he takes a cold shower.

And then looks for more liquor.


	7. A Ghost of Me

The morning after her assault on Crane he'd found her in the kitchen, ripping all of the tea bags and spilling the grains and leaves all over the floor. She'd glanced at him once as he walked in, cut her eye at him before she'd grabbed her mug of coffee and hopped up on the stool. Watching as he walked in and took in the mess that she had no inclination to clean. "You don't have to if you don't want to," she shrugged, tone already so brittle cold so early in the morning. "You can leave it all right there, tedious mess. Like us. You can leave _us_ , right there on the floor, Crane."

"Leftenant I---"

"Oh ho ho!" She'd laughed. "Respectable, Lef-ten-ant. The untouchable, sacred, thing you revered for so long. Before you decided to blaspheme this holy temple, forsook your faith in your goddess, and fled." She shook her head.

"I never said."

"That you worshipped me? That you revered me?" Draining the last drop she throws the mug to the floor and it shatters with a hollow crash, nary an exclamation so much as a flinch from Crane, who's accustomed to this from her now. "Well _you should_ _have_." sliding off the stool, tiptoeing around shards and grains. "You should have. You should have honoured me, or else you wouldn't plan an escape route and then conspire to come back here, and desecrate my holy ground. My Life.Again." there was the faintest tremble in her lip as she left. Dragging her feet up the stairs.

* * *

 

He'd followed her to the cemetery where the non existent body of Daniel Reynolds rests. Watched her haul her small frame to perch atop the head stone, like the most beautiful, dark, unhinged broken angel. 

She'd managed proper garments today. Though he got the distinct impression, as she examined herself in the mirror before she left, that she was dressing up for the deceased. 

She sits there, feet dangling the barest inch after she kicked off her heels. She's wearing a suit. Navy blue, purple collared shirt. A soft lip. Crane stands down the path, watching her murmur and whisper and half smile as she talks to the stone. To Danny.

_You going back to work soon?_

_Danny,_

_Abs._

_I tried walking in there the other day. I heard you in the halls._

_Oh Abs._

_I….I hear you in the house, burning things in the kitchen._

_Those are the memories you keep huh?_ he teases gently.

A choked off laugh and gasp _. Danny, I hear you breathing beside me in bed. I feel it on my neck._

She waits for him to admonish her. For him to tell her this is too much. But he's not entertaining her today, or her mind is too weak to conjure his voice. But there's Crane approaching stoically at last. Mouth set in a firm grim line. She's wearing on him. He's almost constantly in a sour mood. Good. She slips wordlessly off the head stone, stroking it lovingly before she turns but she swears she hears him, or maybe just herself again.

_Abbie, babe, It's in your head. You're imagining things._

* * *

 

She locked him out the house on a rainy day. He'd made an impressive racket about it. "Now you know how it feels," she'd drawled from her bedroom window. "Locked out, cold. Imagine my tears are the rain. Imagine you are being soaked through with tears."

* * *

He'd swept the kitchen, cleaned and fluffed, but he doesn't cook robust meals anymore. Coffee. Sandwiches. Cans of soup. Canned only because he finds whenever he lingers in a space too long it's fool proof that she will meander there to haunt him. She'd caught him in the midst of preparing a stew recently and it had been a daunting thing to finish the task at hand while she glared at him so.

Abbie haunts him in this house. Makes a frightful ghost of herself, she has caught him off guard, numerous, numerous times.

He, soldier and Witness and defender,

Now jumps at shadows and winds blowing the curtain. 

His hands tremble and jitter as he makes his tea. Turned too fast and broke a vase yesterday when she entered a room. Drops plates without cause. Had cringed as it splintered and Abbie had _laughed_. The coldest ringing sound.

He tosses at night. And his own appetite flees him. He trails her for her own health but sometimes he finds him self thinking longingly of sleep, some sort of oblivion, feeling so bone deep weary.

Deidre came by the week before, and they made pleasant as they could through the visit before Deidre and Abbie went off to discuss, Daniel matters.

Daniel is another ghost Crane has inherited, although the man doesn't unsettle him as much as the woman left behind does. Just a gentle, insistent push, prodding his brain, to stay. Stay.

Stay.

Stay.

Stay.

Stay.

And rot? he almost asks. Rot seems like an inherent part of the equation.

_You did say Eternity._

Daniel's, Abbie's or his own voice taunting him now, he cannot know.


	8. A Heart

Days go by.

But there are missing hours. Gaps of time unaccounted for. Usually it's Jenny or Deidre---she told Abbie recently she plans to list Danny's home for sale--- there while he's gone. Perhaps he thinks she's stupid enough not to notice.

"Evening Crane,"

At the front door, just coming in, he pauses at the sound of her voice. As he draws nearer he finds Abbie, of course, in the kitchen.

Their most infamous war zone.

Her jaw is set and her eyes half lidded, lashes wet. Whether she had been crying or is about to start is unclear to him. "Where have you been"

Quivering hands find solace clasped together in front of him as he straightens his spine.

"Where have you been"

"Good evening, Leftenant." and with a brisk stride starts for the stairs.

"Crane." voice tight and accusatory.

"I said Good night."

* * *

 

 _You're killing him_ , he warns. _You're going to kill him Abbie._

 _And so what?_ she laughs. _Him first, then me, that's how it was supposed to go. Then maybe you can come back._

_Abbie you **promised** me you weren't trying to---_

_Everyone else gets to say things they don't mean why shouldn't I? He chooses to forge his fate with me and then forges his ass a path half way across the world from me. You promise not to leave and first chance you get---_

_**Abbie---** _

_You chose the **box** , over me._

_I chose_ **_you_.** _I have_ **_always chosen you._**

 _Nobody chooses me._ she shoots back. _Nobody ever chooses me._

_You want to end it all Abbie, then come here then. Give up on everything and ruin everyone's lives and everything you could have._

_What am I supposed to have, Danny?_

_A **heart.**_

She pauses with cigarette half way to her lips.

_Woman I love has a heart._

* * *

 

It's morning when she hears him coming in as she pads down the steps and studies his face as he beelines for the kitchen. She follows him down, watching him put on coffee and pinch the bridge of his nose as he exhales. He's thinner, now. His hair, dishevelled and unwashed. Unruly scruff spreads across his jaw making him look decidedly wild and unrefined. So unlike any version of Crane she has ever known.

"Coffee" he grunts, plunking down a mug on the table.

"Where you coming from."

"Toast?"

"Crane."

"Cheese?

"You sleeping somewhere else?"

He stiffens momentarily before he takes down a plate. Blatantly ignoring her.

"You're supposed to keep an eye on me." she says. "Make sure I don't do myself in."

He scoffs."There is a far greater danger of me delivering myself"

"We can do it together," she entreats. "Like how we do everything."

"Misery. Utter and complete misery is all this has ever been to you, is that it, Miss Mills?"

"You didn't answer my question."

"Damn and hell." he slams his fist on the counter and whirls on her. "You didn't answer mine."

Gritting her teeth Abbie performs an about face. "You look like hell."

"Well I feel like it," he raises his mug in a mock toast. "Cheers to matching."

* * *

 

Abbie follows him one night. Flapping coat in the dark like a spectre as he turns this way then that and she hangs back and hides behind trees when he turns around, eyes wild and suspicious.

To the tunnels, even trickier down here, not to let her foot steps echo she creeps along stealthily and finds the archive door ajar. She peers through the crack, and there he is. Surrounded, by books.

Drawing and sketching and murmuring. "I've tried everything. Every single spell Master Reynolds and there is nothing to revive you, nothing." he throws his head in his hands on the table. "God knows, Daniel. I'm not enough for the job. I can never be. She needs you, and everything you gave her when I could not."

Rapt fascination holds her captive there, listening with her mouth slightly open.

"She won't let me in, Daniel. She….I….I ruined, everything, Daniel. I have tried, to be kind and patient and she grows worse, ever more hostile towards me, angry, and morose. I am at wits end and Daniel I would trade spaces with you if it would give her peace. If it would make her happy. If…..Master Reynolds I would give anything, for her to have, anything, everything she needs to heal but Daniel, it's not… _.it's not, me"_

He sweeps his arm across the table and all of the texts go crashing to the floor. "I've failed you. I've failed her."

Resurrection is what keeps him out at odd hours. Desperate and vague hope, stinking defeat.

Broken.

 _You've broken him._ She thinks numbly.

Shattered together.

As you should be.

Destinies entwined.

Breaking points and rock bottoms, too.

Ground zero, all.

The playing field is level now. 

Nothing is fair, anymore. 

Nothing will be held back. 


	9. Everything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you believe me if I said I had a completely different direction in mind when I started this chapter.....oh well.

The night she caught him fracturing in the archives she'd beat him home and had raced upstairs, tucking herself in before his key turned in the lock. Heard weary steps trudging around downstairs before he went to bed.

She was first to rise come morning, not unusual. She'd brewed coffee and poured two cups, feeling uncomfortable even performing this vague small gesture. It can't mean anything, she not sure she wants it to. Only she'd never thought in her wildest dreams, that of all things Crane was sneaking out to return Danny to her.

Had she driven him so far?

No further surely, than she had gone when he saved her life and then vanished from it.

No further, surely, than she had gone in losing this odd human shaped anchor in her life and drifting, struggling, to reclaim her former life's purpose.

Surely no further than she had gone in making herself vulnerable enough to love Danny only to lose him, and to be thrown back together with this man who had so wounded her in the first place.

Surely he can't have it that bad.

And so what if he does.

Don't they always say, how misery loves company? They're a far better suited match now, both angry and melancholy. Both frustrated and confused. Maybe they can understand one another properly now. Speak the same desperate broken language of irrational rages and creeping despair.

So beside the cup of coffee she'd left a liquor bottle, and a glass, in case. And a cigarette.

Bad habits after all are more fun with company.

* * *

 

Graveside. 7 am.

Dressed in her suit and hair pulled back. She stops at the foot of the hill when she sees him there, at the foot of Danny's grave.

Two days since, deciding not to wake him to bring him here, she's surprised he's beaten her. She's going back into the office today. Start discussing her return, what needs to be put in order. She was stopping by to speak with him before she went. She held off from smoking this morning and there's only a dark slosh of coffee in her stomach, tentatively balanced with half an apple.

The other half left rattling around on a plate for Crane. She hasn't worked out quite how she intends to address the other night, so she's suspected he's kept going. Was rather banking on him making a direct stop back at the house before discovering she'd left. At the moment Abbie cannot decide if she's curious or irritated that Crane has managed to know her so well yet again. Or if this ismerely a macabre coincidence.

She edges forward, and as she does so, notes a pales, bluish shape standing just behind the tree below Danny's grave. Far enough to go unnoticed by Crane, not so for Abbie. When the figure lifts its head her heart stops.

**_Danny?_ **

_Abs._

_Crane's been---_

_I know._

_Why won't you answer? Aren' I worth coming back for?_

He chuckles sadly. _Oh Abbie I would if I could, you must know that. I love you. Have always. With every single thing in me Abbie I did this because I love you. I did it because I knew….I knew if it was him, it would hurt you even worse._

 ** _Danny_**. _No, Danny, Please---I never meant---_

 _I told him to look after you, Abs_. _You're not making it easy for him._ and he begins to fade. _I **love you,** Abbie._

She starts toward the tree, increasing her pace as the image of him races back toward the stone, where Danny perches for a moment, clapping Crane on the shoulder, before he disappears.  _Now, Crane._

Crane looks up then and sees her, momentarily shaken by the bizarre feeling that someone had just touched his shoulder, someone very cold, before Abbie begins shaking her head, tears streaming down her face and running back down and away from the path.

"Leftenant?" he starts, voice craggy from disuse. "Leftenant!" louder as he breaks into a jog behind her. She trips on the incline and when she falls it's in Crane's arms bracing to catch her. "Abbie? Abbie what are you doing here"

And she turns into his embrace, curling fingers in his coat, grabbing him, holding on, pulling him closer than she has ever allowed him to be.

 _You didn't love him enough,_ she thinks tearily. _Danny died because he thought you wouldn't miss him nearly as much, you didn't love him enough, Abbie. It wasn't enough._

There's nothing to be done for her sobbing and Crane is weary of  her outbursts. Arranging himself accordingly, he hefts Abbie in his arms,head still buried in his shoulder, carries her out of the cemetery. Deposits her in the car seat, fastens her in. "You're not going in today," he says softly as he puts the car in drive.

At home he helps her out of the shoes and jacket, and carries her again, and she doesn't protest, that's the wonder, to the couch.After he goes to the kitchen to grab her some water, and notes the half piece of apple on the plate, the now cold mug of coffee.

The second in her distant offerings. He'd had the liquor _and_ the coffee yesterday. Tried the cigarette and near stifled himself trying to muffle his choking. Shaking his head he puts on the kettle for tea and goes back to her side on the couch and she instantly leans into him. "I saw you." she says. "At the archives."

"Miss Mills."

"Abbie. Dear God Crane I'm coming undone for the hundredth time don't ever call me anything but Abbie again." 

"Abbie. What happened to you, at the cemetery?"

"Me?" she sniffles, head cloudy and pounding, the headache that accompanies too much crying. "What's happened to _you_? Trying to bring back Danny in your place?"

"You long for him," Crane replies, eyes downcast on the floor, hands clasped loosely between his knees. "He gave you things I could not provide. Can not" he finishes.

"But that doesn't mean---"

"Doesn't mean what, Abbie?" he rights her in the sofa and pushes off to stand. "Doesn't mean that you'd rather him be here with you, than me who---" he wrestles and loses, "I know I was wrong!" he roars. "I know I hurt you! I can't _**take**_ that back, that's mine! I own it, that's my debt to pay and it's gained interest, but this----these shoes I cannot fill, Abbie, I am only me. Imperfect, inconvenient me. That's all I am and it seems all I've ever been to you."

"How can that be all you've ever been to me when you took so much from me to begin with?" she shoots back, tears still on her face as she stares at him in disbelief on the couch. "You think I'm like this for fun? Only someone you care for can hurt you as much as you hurt me, because you got scared of losing me Crane? That's what you said right? You thought you were better off not having anything than losing everything well _I, lost, you_ "

"Abbie."

" ** _I lost you_**!" she screams. "I lost you, I lost myself and Danny found me. Danny found me, loved me, helped me find myself again and be alright without you and then he died, he died. He, loved me enough that it was worth him losing _everything_ so I could live. Because he, he told me told me he trusted you to look after me. The man who took _everything_ from me because that's what you did Crane,"

This is the truthful hour.

She takes a deep breath.

"You were _my everything_. And then you took yourself away."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh don't worry, this conversation will continue.


	10. Need

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My shortest chapter of all time, apologies, I just needed to get this one out.

_Do you see me now?_

The tears keep flowing, her lip trembles, and she is stripped so bare before him. _This is me._

He can't breathe, breath stolen by this admission, this thing greater than him, beyond him. "My everything." she repeats.

And Abbie has never been so naked. He has never been so easy to see through.

"Abbie." and he reaches for her. "Abbie I never meant to hurt you---Abigail _I'm in love with you_ \--"

" yet you were planning to leave me again if you found a spell that worked?" she accuses.

His own eyes water.

"Leave me to love me? That it? Between you and Danny you hurt me a helluva lot to love me." she shouts, running her fingers through her hair, crying in earnest. His fingers only just graze her shoulder when she flinches away and it feels a slap, like a punch to the gut. "No wonder I stayed out of Love for so long. It hurts. it _HURTS_ Crane." she turns her gaze on him. "And I'm so scared." he begins to approach again but she backs away.

"What are you afraid of?"

"of **_you!_** Crane I am **_TERRIFIED_** of you. You deserted me, and then I lose Danny, and now I'm supposed to let you take care of me? A man who has been conspiring _again_ of a creative way to leave me because you think what, Crane---that I so enjoy being alone? That I don't have anything to give?  How do I trust you when you ran away from me," words breaking forth between sobs. "Go back to someone who assaulted me?"

"I was doing it because out of love, a sacrifice, I've never meant to cause you more harm Abbie---"

"My HEART Crane you _beat up my heart_ , you **_bastard_** and came back here and only you, Crane. Only _you_ can turn my life inside out and I want to hurt you, really hurt you, but I still need you." this admission of needing and helplessness itself is breaking her. She feels like her wheels are coming off, spiralling truly off the deep end.

"Abbie I promise, never again. Never. I am half the man you deserve but I will workfor you. I will be yours in whatever way you need me. I would do anything." his arms wrap around her and she fights. Hitting at him and struggling and screaming, scratching and clawing to break free.

"Let me go," she weeps when Crane catches her fighting hands in his, pinning her against the wall. " _Let me go_ Crane I can't bare for you to hold on to me now just to let me go again. I can't do it, _please, let me go, I'm scared Crane. I'm so afraid of you_." and she begins to crumble and Crane goes with her crashing to the floor and he holds her against him so tight, caressing her forehead, wiping tears from her cheeks, holding her close. " _I need you._ " she whispers brokenly. "I'm so scared that I need you. Let me go, Crane. Please." even as she says it, her fingers continue to wrap in his shirt and she takes refuge in his frame, bawling all of her hurt, wracking his body and hers with the force of her tears and his own face is wet, his own breath shallow and exhausted and raw. But he doesn't dare break this hold, gripped by an irrational fear that if he does Abbie might literally fragment in front of him. He kisses her hair, and murmurs his apologies and regrets. Which are numerous. Too many wrongs to atone for and it reminds him afresh how ill treated she has been, and by his own hand. But no more, never again. The road will be long. But he will carry her _every step of the way_ if need be. Her weary heart and feet will no longer tread this road. Her heaving slows to silent streaming tears and a struggle to take deep breaths when he speaks, voice tender and rumbling in her ear.

"Abbie," he says softly trying to soothe her as she shakes. "Abbie I'm here. I mean it. I'm  _here._  I've **_got you_**." he adds fiercely, arms tightening just a bit. 

She gasps.

When Abbie looks up to meet his eyes she sees Danny standing over his shoulder, watching them.

He nods once.

Gives a half smile.

_He's got you_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the introduction to easy street.   
> But it is the beginning of taking those tentative steps forward.


	11. Real

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pick up precisely after the breakdown.

The day is young.

Heartache and fear, weeks, months and years old and these tears themselves rise up from such depths and these deep heavy breaths as if from weary hard arduous treks, and yet all of this unearthing of long buried and the denied feelings thoughts and words, in mere early hours, laid all out on the floor. Laid in arms and laid bare. Shivering still, because the weight of these burdens now lifted leaves them cold and exposed. All there is, is the other.

Destroyer and salvation, one.

Truly, the word Everything, encompasses all the possible shades of light and dark.

* * *

 

Quietly, so quietly they tread through the house, always close, now, her hand always curled in his and he leads her gently to kitchen, to cupboard, to mug, to kettle, to water, to teabag, to brew. Hand still in his to toaster, to butter to cheese, to knife to apple to slices to plate. Two plates made modestly, honestly, single handedly. Offers her one which she takes, he lingers a moment gripping it, trying to assure himself and her that she's not about to drop it, but she holds firm and then leading still to stool, to counter, back to sugar and milk and back to sit, beside her.

A potentially awkward moment presents itself when it comes to eating, given that she's not left handed, and is too weak, too…..everything, to release his hand, but as if sensing this he turns in his seat and grabs her toast, lays slices of cheese on it and brings it to her mouth.

She is not hungry. She has not been.

But the fight had fled, in all of her fear and clutching and collapsing and she opens her mouth, and takes this bite. It breaks her inside still, for if she had thought she was being coddled before, surely this is the height of it, being hand fed. But this is the reality. She is this broken. She has finally splintered and she doesn't honestly know how to come back from everything she's said, and knows, with a dull sense of clarity, that he won't let her forget it. That he means to fix it.

She will have to relearn how to be open now. How to accept this nearness. Another bite, and he watches her chew, swallow, before offering the mug, which she can handle on her own and then taking a deep breath turns her head back for another bite.

She will have to let him now fit together his parts of the puzzle into her life.

And they will fit.

That's the scary thing. They _will fit_. They're meant to. She'll have to trust he won't find some reason to upset the picture all over again.

He bites after she has, and after, cleans up, with her in tow, the same way, and then judging the hour groans.

The day is too young. He wishes for the dark of night and they could sleep, could resolve themselves to quiet, but there are yet so many hours to fill and short of holding her in his arms and never letting go---he's unsure if that more so benefits her or himself---there is nothinghe can really think of to do. He looks down at her, staring blearily ahead, her eyes still red, and then down, at the shirt and dress pants she's still wearing, that she had planned on wearing to work.

"I should get out of these clothes." she says, as if reading his thoughts.

He nods, begins taking the steps, with her just behind him. To her bedroom door, and then he pauses, frowning, before making up his mind to enter, pushing the door open so she can follow.

All of his manners and decorum has helped nothing, where it pertains to Abbie. All it has ever been, was a clever, at time chivalrous and perhaps even charming, way for him to stay apart. Excuses for him to not invade her space, to not get to close. Just pretty excuses that had done more harm then good. She doesn't object to him being here, he releases her hand a moment, turning his back to rummage in her closet for comfier things.

"I….." she starts and Crane turns to face her, thinking perhaps a minute too that she might be undressed and this would be highly indecent, but she is fully clothed when he meets her eyes.

"Yes? Abbie what is it?"

_Abbie._

There's a strange feeling in her chest that he's used her name. Not because he's scared, not because there is danger and the situation dire, she had told him to call her by name so many times, and it was then, when she was breaking down and she made her most recent demand, he listens now. Does he see it, she wonders, all of his rules and boundaries how they had slowly been dividing them? Creating wedges? But her name. Relief.

"Abbie?" he presses, advancing.

"Ichabod?" she says, testing it out on her tongue. So strange and  alien a name. Maybe they really can find their footing again if they can break down some of these old habits. His face softens and he reaches to touch her shoulder.

"You never call me Ichabod."

"You've never asked me to," she replies, a little tearful again. "I've always wanted you to use my first name, I got why you didn't, manners and respect, all of that. But Crane I was really just asking you to be familiar with me. Close to me. That's what I was really asking."

"Why did you not say?"

"Because it sounded stupid?" she laughs weakly. "It sounded stupid. I didn't have a clear reason then, more than, people in this century use first names, and I got use to the way you did things, but when you used my name, it always felt different Crane. It always felt like you were seeing me then. Really seeing me. Even if you only ever seemed to see mewhen the world was at stake. Or when you were afraid……" she looks away from him. "That was when I felt real to you. When you thought you might lose something…."

" _You_ ," he cuts in. "You, when I thought I might lose _you_."

"Well only then." she sniffs. "That was when I was real. Not every other single day we were together."

Had he ever done anything right? Every little small thing about him has been nothing short of a detriment to their relationship. He wishes he could erase every 'Leftenant' and 'Miss Mills' he'd ever uttered and call her 'Grace' and 'Abigail' and 'My heart'. Because Abbie has always been VERY DEEPLY REAL to him. So much so it terrified him, that was why it was so much easier, more proper, to address her by title, to remember his place, to keep her up on that pedestal……so far, out of his reach……but she had never asked to be put there……"Abigail," he says, "Abbie, I had no idea, that…." he trails off, tilting his head back, willing tears to roll back behind his eyes. "I'm so sorry." he says. "I cannot express enough, I am so deeply regretful that I….continued to alienate you that way Abbie I….I feared myself, I feared stepping out of bounds…"

"There has never been any boundaries more than the stupid ones we put on ourselves because I was afraid and you were ' _decent_ '" she spits. "We did this to us." she bites her lips together. "We did it."

"Abbie…."

"I'd….I'd like…..could you…" she huffs exasperatedly. "Run the water for a bath, please"

* * *

 

Coat discarded in the guest room, along with his shoes and his sleeves rolled up, he triple checks the temperature before calling that its ready. She comes in, dwarfed in a fluffy robe and walks past him, nonchalantly, and without preamble drops the robe and steps into the water, submerging herself.

It is the first time he sees her nakedness, simple, beautiful, earthy bare, and vulnerable, as she throws her head back and exhales. She is so drained. He considers leaving, because of course this is a breech but yet, it's as if fighting with an old mentality. He doesn't wish to leave, truly, not because he wants to gawk at her---there is absolutely nothing even vaguely erotic or arousing about her needing to soak away the emotional pain of the day. But because he, just, needs to be here. Wordlessly he crosses his ankles, sinking down on the floor next to the tub, and without a word, she lifts one hand out of the water and he takes it in his.

And he holds her hand there, over the edge of the tub.

No words, just breaths.

Until the water is cold.


	12. Need

He held the robe for her to slip into, escorted her back to her room, lingering, a hand stretching out and then snatched back as she pushes the door open and she holds it a moment, silently waiting, asking if he's going to come in. 

"It's early," his voice sounds in the space between them, he's not sure if it's whisper or croak. Door still ajar, Abbie looks ahead of her into her room, at the window where the sun still hangs. So it is. But tell her weary heart and mind that. That which is drowsy and wrinkled from the bath. Rest, echoes like a thump in her skull. Rest, rest, rest. 

"I could use a nap." she says and before the words have left her lips---

"A moment and no more," he begins to take off down the hall, turning over his shoulder a moment as if to make sure she's still there while he dashes to the guest, reenters the hall with the bundle of clothing in his arms, fixes his gaze on her again as he all but storms into the washroom and if Abbie wasn't so foggy, she would think the spectacle of him was amusing. 

Instead it just strikes her how glaringly strange and odd he is. 

Has always been.

Of course everything regarding them is  muck. They're hardwired to give the other head and heartache in equal measure, they are so different. More the wonder then, that they got along, more the wonder that their bond had grown so frighteningly deep and had cut even deeper when left untended, and now, like threads unravelling, these stubbornness of it, them, to knit together once more. 

She shifts into the room and changes. She doesn't use Danny's shirt anymore. She hung it up, very carefully in her closet. She takes it out to touch her face with the sleeve, thinking of him. She does this now, for just a moment, praying silently, _give me strength._

_You are the last person in this world who needs more strength,_

she hears his soft chuckle rumble in her ear and smiling, she drops the sleeve and tucks it back in the closet. 

"You laugh at me now huh," 

"Abbie?" Crane pokes his head in the door, dressed in….modern, things. 

The image perplexes her. Sweat pants. T-shirt. Bare feet. And his hair is still damp and face so impossibly scruffy. 

"Who were you talking to," he glances around suspiciously, expecting a demon perhaps to lurch from behind the curtain. 

"Danny" she answers honestly and watches as Crane's eye shift to her, assessing. Pondering perhaps if he is overstepping bounds being here, in such a relaxed manner. She tears her gaze away and speaks into the closet. "I always talk to him. I talked to him about you, and yet….."

"Yet," he presses.

"He…..trusts you, or something, don't ask me how he went from one to the other…."

"I did not have enough time to grow fond of him myself," Crane ventures. "But there was something stalwart, hardy about him…..were….were the roles reversed and I had gone, I'd have trusted him to take care of you." he hangs his head. "Loath as I am to admit it. I am of the impression he treated you well."

"Extremely well" she replies softly, but with no intent to sound malicious. It's just a fact she states, just an answer to a question. "You were alright with me sometimes," she adds, turning she walks past him and crawls into the bed. He eyes it and then catches sight of a chair, dragging it close bedside. There is not enough energy in her to even roll her eyes at this. Propriety again. 

 But old habits die hard. 

And isn't Ichabod Crane himself the oldest and hardest thing she has ever tried and failed to shake? 

He watches her settle in among the sheets, fluffing and punching her pillow, drawing covers up beneath her chin. He draws the blinds, shuttering them in shadow, and claims his seat. He burrows through the blankets to find her hand again and her fingers close easily around his, eyes already shut, chasing after sleep. 

"Abbie," he calls, but be it wilfulness or she has already drifted into slumber she doesn't answer. 

Crane mutters a prayer for strength. 

He thinks it is Daniel answering him now, chuckling again.

_Because being strong has done you both **so** many favours._

* * *

 

Straight through to the following morning. An impossible and almost disgusting feat to sleep so many consecutive hours. She has a clear view of the window and that shouldn't be. There should be a Crane form dozing in the chair opposite. She shifts, barely, and is briefly shocked to find his blue eyed gaze tracking her from where he lays tucked behind her in the bed. She doesn't say anything and neither does he. She glances down at his arm locked around her over the blanket and lays her head back down on the pillow. Closes her eyes, and breathes deep.

"Good morning Abbie," he whispers at last, voice tentative and vaguely apologetic,on the verge perhaps of exactly that when he continues, " I….wanted to be closer, I hope I haven't….." he abandons the thought and she feels the mattress shift and the frame give a slight rock as he moves to clamber out and away from her. 

He cannot get far, though, for her small hand has reached to clutch his arm tighter around her. He chews his lip before crawling back in, settling behind her. "Good morning, Abbie" he says again, as if to start the day over.

"Morning."

* * *

 

Breakfast is food. Actual someone had better cook food seeing as they had one lone meagre meal the day prior food. Hurriedly scrambled eggs and Abbie's mind drifts fondly to memories of Danny in this kitchen with her, and it's a shock that it isn't accompanied by more tears. She watches Crane moving with such silent grace, not a fumbled utensil, not a charred pan. Capable. 

She eats because she is hungry, today. But don't ask her if she tastes anything.

* * *

 

"I wondered, Miss--Abbie, Abbie" he insists, shaking himself. Abbie looks up from the book she's reading on the porch, cigarette in one hand, that she only just lit. His disapproving gaze lingers on it but he tries to refocus on whatever reason he came out here to bother her. "If…if….if y-y-you…. you….oh,…oh, oh, n-n-never mind," he flusters, banging the door back open and headed back inside. Chewing the inside of her cheek she closes the book, takes one final drag before she stubs it out and follows after him. 

"What is it Crane."

"I should not bother you with these things, I…" 

She finds him in the living room, surrounded by newspapers and the laptop screen lit up. When she draws nearer she recognizes advertisements and employment postings. He's circled ones that interest him, she guesses, or whatever he thinks he may be qualified for, but in spite of what ever kind of, haphazard method of organization he has applied here, he's clearly overwhelmed. 

"Job, hunting?" 

"You said I should----"

 _I mean were you not intending of ever supporting yourself?_ she almost snaps. 

"I had every intent but I have been a……slacker, years past, Abbie. I see that. On top of all of our emotional disarray I cannot be a financial burden to you any longer."

"What did you come out there for," she drawls. 

" _I don't know_." he says. 

He begins to cry. 

Abbie blinks, dumbfounded. 

"I don't know, I have become so used to your aid at every juncture and now….now I do not want to cause you further distress, to monopolize your time when I have already taken so much of it---Hurt you with so much of my need" 

She opens her mouth to say, something, anything. But he keeps crying and shuddering and when she goes closer to him, in curious shock more than anything that he's going to pieces over this, he draws just slightly away. " _Please_ , no no, Abbie, please, I'll…I'll figure it out," 

She watches him. 

He keeps crying.

* * *

 

She's out on the porch one morning a week or two  after, coffee in one hand, fiddling with her lighter in the other, and she doesn't even hear him join her---she spooks and spills her drink, drops her  cigarette, coffee sloshing down her front and all, her tobacco relief jittered merrily down the steps into the dirt. 

"Oh, I'm so sorry Abbie, I didn't mean to startle you," but she would dare say he looks satisfied that she won't be able to smoke. 

"Morning Crane." she grumps. 

"I….I have an interview."

"Mmm."

"At a carpenters."

There is nothing more alarming to her than the concept of Crane working with modern tools. "Excuse me?"

"Woodworking, building," he explains with tempered excitement. Abbie cocks her head to the side. Did this humanoid library just say he was applying to work with his hands? Not that cranium of his crammed full of information? 

"Who are you,"

A smile, a real one breaks across his face and it's the first she's seen in so long it dazes her. "I've always been very good with my hands," he says, a little humbly, "I shall always be an academic, but the hours, to teach or tutor, to grade assignments, and the insipid business of taking coffee orders, parroting the same thing all day every day…..this is preferable."

The hours? 

"Crane---"

"It's only part time," he rushes to assure her, and she believes this is part of the greatest draw to the position. Not because he doesn't want to work. But a full work day means a full day out the house, away from her. Work that would follow him home and consume his time, his mental faculties---there is brain work involved in building and crafting and repair, but not the level of absorption he knows he can dedicate to academia. He has little desire to be so wholly absorbed in anything beyond her. 

And in the end, he'll have actual tangible product of his efforts to show for it.

Abbie gapes at him, watches as his vulnerable bright smile begins to twitch now with her delayed reaction. "That's…that's great, Crane. When is it?"

"Next week, Tuesday" he replies. 

She nods, counting in her head. She's attempting a return to the office again in that same amount of days.

"See, you didn't need me after---"

He snatches her hand quickly, holding it up to his heart, and he's close, too close, she finds herself backing up a step. "I will always need you Abbie. In so very many ways." his gaze boring into her, it's the most heated exchange they've had in weeks, since the emotional baring of her soul, even since he's been sleeping with her every night. His eyes sparkle at her. Distantly she thinks she remembers him saying he's in love with her. 

Abbie manages a small smile. "Thank you"

 


	13. Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from Hero by Enrique Iglesias.

Monday night, after both of them had spent a foreign amount of time looking over one others wardrobe for the next day. Their strangeness with the other collapsed rather rapidly when anxious nerves began to set in for the both of them. For Abbie she fears such a long reprieve from her post will make her lag in her assignments, turn her sluggish in the field. She is up at odd hours fretting about it, muttering insecurities to herself, to Crane, listening in half sleep from the bedside chair where he'd taken post after bringing her tea, and after, when he is clearly too far gone in slumberland to answer her, murmurs these worries to Jenny on the phone in frantic whispers--"It'll be fine"---before groggily hanging up. Deidre, bless her soul, steady as they come bares her phone calls, only inquiring vaguely once every other call ---five--- if there have been any offers on Danny's house.

They listed it a while ago. 

Well, Abbie told Deidre she would take care of it. Delivering the forms etc. 

Eventually. 

And when all else fails, takes her fretting to Danny. 

_You got this Abs._

And she'll follow up with a reason of why she doesn't 'have this' at all. But then he's gone. 

He answers less nowadays.

Letting her go. 

For Crane's part, it is anxious bluster and fuss and concocting elaborate answers to improbable questions and talking,talking,talking,chitter,chatter,fidget,yammering Abbie's ears off. On an incessant loop. She snapped the day before, threw a pillow at him. 

Right at his head. He didn't duck in time.

He'd looked absolutely affronted. 

Her irritation had blown over and was replaced with laughter. Oh how she laughed at him, clutching her sides, plunking down on the sofa and kicking her feet, tears running out her eyes laughter. 

"Abbie," he'd hissed in admonishment but she howled louder. His brow was furrowed in indignation for all of half a beat before he joined in with her. Chuckling as his long frame slid down the wall, his head in his hands. 

They laughed together. And it was like remembering who they once were and could be.

* * *

 

But now, when they have sufficiently wrung their hands about their employment woes. Abbie glances at her unruly hair and Crane frowns at his own wild beard, the cut that has grown vastly uneven. 

She's sitting down at her dresser, putting her hair up, then down, then---

 _https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koJlIGDImiU-_ Enrique Iglesias

_Let me be your hero_

Crane''s lower half appears in the reflection behind her.

_would you dance, if I asked you to dance?_

 His hands appear next, reaching tentatively toward her before they fall away and Abbie remains still as she hears his footsteps treading across the room, and then the steady drag thump of a chair as he lowers himself into it behind her. Adjusting it so he's close enough. Her hands fall into her lap, and she watches them there a moment before she looks up and catches his eye in the mirror, they hold, as he reaches forward, taking her tresses in his hands. 

_Would you run, and never look back?_

_Would you cry, if you saw me crying?_

Fingers twining, dancing nimbly, reaching quietly for the wide toothed comb. She lets the tension go out of her shoulders

_Would you save my soul, tonight?_

_Would you tremble, if I touched your lips?_

_Would you laugh? Oh, please tell me this._

Braid and pin. Her lips twitch watching a bobby pin hang out the side of his mouth. 

_Now would you die, for the one you love?_

Braid and pin.

_Hold me in your arms, tonight._

_I can be your hero, baby_

_I can kiss away the pain_

_I will stand by your forever,_

_you can take, my breath away._

Massages oils and product through her strands as he works. Pulling hair back away from her face his fingertips graze her cheeks. He's never touched her this way before. This close. The contact slows his movements some, as if he's on the same train of thought before plucking another pin from between his lips and securing more hair in place.

_Would you swear, that you'll always be mine?_

_Would you lie? would you run and hide?_

She watches her reflection, surprised at the vulnerability on her face with her hair done this way. It's practical but still almost too pretty for her to wear to work. She'll have to rethink that pant suit now. 

Finished, he glances at his scented and moisturizer covered palms and screwing up his mouth drags his hands through his hair like a towel. "There," he says, hands landing on her shoulders. "Is….is it alright?"

_Am I in too deep?_

_Have I lost my mind?_

She nods. 

He nods. "Good." 

_I don't care. You're here tonight._

He puts back the chair, stows away her hair things and leaves the room, leaving her sitting still before her mirror and a sort of stunned silence. She tries out smiling in the mirror. She'd almost pass for happy. Competent and sound of mind, at least. She cocks her head at the sound of the water running, and rises from her seat.

His eyes blink open when the door cracks and she watches him wrestle with shouting about indecency as she draws nearer into the bathroom, door closed behind her. He's merely soaking in the tub. Hasn't even dunked his head yet. 

_I can be your hero, baby_

She's as deft and quiet as he was digging out shampoo and conditioner, and making room for herself on the lip of the tub. She doesn't look past his head of hair, instead at his shoulders that have gone rigid at this breech of space. It crosses her to reprimand him for his modesty when hers had been shredded to bits mere days ago, in this same place, where she'd been stark naked for a flash before sinking into the tub, and he had sat there like a sentinel, her hand clasped in his. But quarrels and arguments have less appeal these days. As she squeezes out a dollop of shampoo into her hand, she thinks on the tender care giving of him doing her hair moments before. Wordless and helpful. 

_I can kiss away the pain_

He exhales as water drips over his head, running through cupped fingers of one hand, before the other joins, fingertips reaching through his mess of floppy golden brown through to his scalp, massaging and working gently. To be touched like this. 

To be seen like this.

 _I will stand by your forever_ ,

By her, no less. He doesn't dare breathe. 

_you can take, my breath away._

Her fingers comb it back from his forehead, and then she reaches for the shower head, tilting his head back as much as she can, with him scrunched up in the front half, so it doesn't run in his eyes. 

It doesn't matter, he's silently crying anyway. 

So is she.  

Conditioner, and she lets it sit, patiently for a few minutes, absolute silence before rinsing again. Making sure it's all clean. And then silently rises, leaving him to finish. 

She lets these wayward tears dry on her face. Of all things to break her without cause---touching him. Without fear of monsters. Without marching into some devastating unknown. Without anger, or pain. Without all of the other confounding guises that have masked simple reasons for contact. Friendly shoulders nudging the other. Friendly fists bumping, exploding. Fingers twined before parting, after parting, never for the sake of it. Never because they dared. 

_Oh, I just want to hold you._

_I just want to hold you, oh, yeah._

She has touched Ichabod Crane while he bathed in the tub. Has felt his hair in her hands. Knows the contours of his scalp. 

He has touched Abbie Mills this night. Knows the befuddling and amazing curls and whirls of her strands, how they bounce and spring. How the finest hairs taper and curl softly, gently, small and downy, at the nape of her neck. The slender curve of it. 

A gentle knock on the door announces him and he's fresh and clean, and red eyed. He went to pieces properly back in his room. 

Wailed relief and horror and joy that she had come so near him. 

_Am I in too deep?_

_Have I lost my mind?_

"You need a trim," she says softly. 

"Where"

She reaches, hovers, his hair or the beard, she ponders when he grasps her hand, lightly, so lightly. "Show me where, Abbie,"

_Well, I don't care. You're here tonight._

"Here," and moves to just where his scruff no longer holds form, it tickles her fingers. "And a little off here," she sighs, moving to brush stray strands from his eyes, her hand guiding his around his own face. His eyes close, impossibly dark lashes fluttering shut, and lifts his other hand to hers. Now, trapped between his two giant palms he presses her hand to his face. 

_I can be your hero, baby_

_I can kiss away the pain_

_I will stand by your forever,_

_you can take, my breath away._

She watches as if this is something happening on the outside, to another person, as if the hand that he turns to kiss is not hers---but then it is hers, and unsteady, unprepared, not ready, flits through her as she pulls away, abruptly, only mildly regretful. And he releases her easily, the moment come and gone. 

"Would you cut it for me?" he asks, voice low rumble soft and devastatingly small. With a nod, he leaves and returns, scissors and razor and towel in hand. She directs him to wear she sat earlier. 

_I can be your hero, baby_

_I can kiss away the pain_

_I will stand by your forever,_

_you can take, my breath away._

_you can take, my breath away._

A neatly nudged together pile on the floor later, she crawls between her sheets and he joins. They sleep. 

_I can be your hero._

* * *

 

A blouse, a skirt. And no amount of restraint in her makeup is going to make her seem more business like and less soft. She wants to blame the way Crane styled her hair but she has to admit she likes the gentleness of it. Even if the end result overall is that she looks gentle. She's not sure she can afford to come across as something less than solid steel in a profession like hers---will anyone take her seriously like this? 

_I don't know anyone who would dare defy you._

_Oh Danny._  

_You look good Abs. I love you. Good luck today babe._

Crane's shrugging on his coat when he catches her giving him a look. With great reluctance he hangs it in the closet. Huffs as he rolls up his sleeves. Abbie screws up her mouth watching him, a strange pride swelling inside of her. This is another first for him. Job interview, a conventional one, in the modern world. She also thinks to herself she did a good job last night, she didn't take too much off the beard, got an even cut going around his head. She steals one last glance in the mirror as she slips on her shoes---those at least go with everything---and straightens, gripping her brief case and just as she does so she reaches with her free hand to turn down a corner on his collar, and his hand goes out to pat a strand back  in place, tucking a loose tendril behind her ear. 

Blue into Brown. Eyes peer, assessing, drinking in. Two inhales, lips part and murmur in tandem, followed by shy smiles. 

"Good luck today." 


	14. Slowly We Grow

An uneventful first day back. Like she'd never left. Except for the handing off of cases and debriefing that Foster had done---she'd been at the helm in Abbie's stead---Abbie's new role, with Danny gone. The one thing no one had mentioned about her return. The commanding vacancy that had become hers to fill. She starts to declare that she won't take a promotion out of pity, and no less of the man she lost but Foster had shut her down, cold.

There had been voting. And applications. Reviewing and reviewing of candidates. She wanted to ask how she could possibly still qualify when she'd been gone so long, enduring the stress she had. Sophie had shrugged. "Your work ethic precedes you Mills," she'd quirked a smile. "Welcome back, boss,"

_**Boss**. Impressive Abs._

_Danny, was….was this you, somehow…._

_You don't need me to make your mark Abbie._

But that doesn't really answer her question.

Of all things she spent the morning, settling in. Sitting in his chair-- _my chair_ \---arranging files and splaying out her fingers on her desk-- _his, desk_ ,-- _Get it together Mills_ she'd shook herself took a deep breath and got back to work. Stopped feeling so strange as she relearned her way around the office space, only occasionally assaulted with a memory ofDanny there, but it wasn't so bad. It didn't quite ache so much. In fact at some point in the day, reviewing the last of a murder file---this is a quiet day back---she feels a surprising comfort and ownership of the space, she smiles.

* * *

 

Abbie's in the process of cracking open a bottle when the door opens. She's pretty sure she deserves a glass of wine for surviving her first day back, promotion and all. She glances over her shoulder where she sits at the counter as Crane comes into view. "You're late," she comments.

"I apologize."

His tone is odd. And his shirt is soaked through. "Is it raining?"

"Hmm? oh no," he gives a boyish smile. "It's very hot in the shop, the owner, Timothy apologizes the air is on the 'fritz'."

"You've been at the shop this whole time?"

"Working hard, Abbie. First day on the job and all."

"You got the job," her voice surprises her---it's this astonished gleeful thing and so shocks her she claps her hands over her mouth, as if she would cram it back in, down her throat.

"I did. I am now gainfully employed at Timothy's Carpentry."

She swallows, makes sure that borderline excited voice isn't about to escape her again before lowering her hands and reaching again for her glass. "Well," she says, sliding off the stool and marching towards him with it, steadily, steadily. "Congrats" His face is so warm and eyes twinkling so bright that when his face falls as she draws quickly away, it hurts. She goes to the cupboard and gets down another glass, pours for herself. She raises it in the air. "To us." she nods, and is about to drink when he interrupts.

"To--- you had a good day then?"

"I've been promoted. Danny's old job."

"Oh" he says, at a loss. Trying and failing to gauge if he should offer congratulations or sympathy.

"It's okay Crane. It…makes me feel close to him, a little.…it's a really nice office," and even though she stops and starts while saying it, she means it. It's an adjustment, but one she can handle. Crane finally smiles, advancing further into the room as if leading a charge, clinking his glass daintily with her own.

"To us,"

* * *

 

Crane cooks. Drank the wine, took a shower, and descended on the kitchen with verve and vigour she'd since forgotten him capable of. Such silent creeping things they'd become. But there are pots boiling and knives chopping and Abbie watches him, acutely remembering, again she thinks irritably,with a pang, how she used to be with Danny in the kitchen. Will this ever stop? She wonders. Will he always be in everything she does? Will she ever see Crane without deceased and beloved Daniel Reynolds superimposed on top?

Crane hums as he works, glancing her way once, twice, mouth curled into a secret sort of smile. She supposes this whole evening wreaks of progress. The almost intimate grooming of each other last night, both successful days in the workforce, a celebratory drink. And to his knowledge, and to his eye, she isn't a weeping mass at the counter. Only slightly distant, with a twinkling tear for the memory that seems is being crowded out with Crane's movements. As if waving a hand through fog.

"You're erasing him." she says. It's unclear even to her what her tone of voice conveys. It's a little broken, a little matter of fact. Her voice gives him pause. He turns with spoon and pot in hand.

"Danny." she continues. "He…I remember….." ahh, so sad and reminiscent….her mind seems to agree as she bows her head. "I remember him here," she says at last. "And you're here now and it just brings back a lot of…."

Spoon and pot back to stove and he's at her side. Employment must make him bold, as his hands grip her shoulders, turning her towards him and he latches his own around her.

"Memories," she gasps, grateful for the chance to crumble. With all the falling apart she's done lately one might think she's grown weary of it----but when you build as many fortresses as Abbie Mills has over the years, there's always another wall to come down. Another barricade she can afford to break.

His lips touch her crown and linger there.

She exhales.

* * *

 

Two weeks since he started his new job.

"For you" he chimes as he heads out the door.

Abbie looks up at the checkered shirt disappearing----she will wonder when that worked into his daily rotation later--- around the corner of her office and at the envelope on her desk. When she tears it open she leaps to her feet, intent on chasing him. "Crane I can't take this---!" but he's already gone, and her subordinates look at her strangely.

It's his first pay cheque.

* * *

"I never meant---"

"For Rent. For food. For….God Abbie let me do this? Just this?"

She doesn't like the routine he develops of giving her his cheque twice amonth. Is even more disquieted by the strange tender feeling that blooms inside her seeing it.

Maybe because she knows he's earned this with his hands. Or that's he's somehow forced himself to swiftly adapt to modern dress.

Or even that he comes home half days and cleans and cooks when able and seems so----proud, to have something to contribute.

And maybe it's the stupid flitting thing he said recently when delivering it---she'd wanted to clobber him and laugh at once but had instead stared after him, slack jawed.

"Buy yourself something nice," he'd said.

And he'd been entirely serious.

* * *

 

 Normalcy, or it's closest cousin, settles over their lives. Enough at least, for her to remember to start reconnecting with the remaining loved ones she has. She sits across from her father at the cafe. It's been a while since she's allowed herself to be seen. He temples his fingers after taking a swig of the coffee. Peers at her with an assessing gaze."How are you?"

Abbie stirs her coffee carefully, slowly, deliberately. Crane found the last of her smokes and made a great show of trashing them in front of her. Declared that he had decided she was quitting. She might have sworn at him. Noticing now how unfocused she feels, she grudgingly admits that perhaps her attachment to them had grown too strong.

"Abbie?"

"Hmm?" she looks up into her father's inquiring eyes. "How have you been?"

"I'm sorry I haven't been in touch, I know Jenny's been calling, it's just been a lot to handle….."

"I asked how you are. No explanations required. How's the job, Jenny tells me you were promoted."

"Head of the office," she says easily. What a wonder that she's gotten to a place where she can own that title and feel confident in it.

"I can think of no one better for the job."

"It was Danny's" she adds, aware the moment she's said it she's invited the spectre of him to loom over them.

 _You always say that like it's supposed to explain something,_ he grumbles from a distance, far away. Danny seems restless now when she hears him, as if he's being distracted from an important phone call. She hears him less and less, further and further.

She wants to hold on to him, and hold she does, her heart grips fiercely around Daniel Reynolds, everything he was so she'll never forget. But still she feels something else slackening inside of her. Something opening up. Sometimes she worries her grip will slip on him entirely.

_You got the job, because you deserve it._

"How's Crane?"

"He's there."

Ezra regards her, imploring her to continue.

"Cooks, cleans, works," she rattles off. Does my hair, she thinks inwardly with a flush.

"Takes care of you" Her father muses with a small smirk.

"Ha" Abbie stabs at her plate and then the words click. She puts down her fork. "……Yeah. I guess he does. Has been."

Ezra nods. "Good."

Within her, it feels like a string has been untied, and that swelling feeling happens again, and Danny starts to drift away.

_That's how you do it babe._

**_Danny,_ **

_Let go._


	15. Yours To Keep, Wherever I Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I need comments to breathe
> 
> <3 love you all and thanks so much for patience with me <3

Her first thought had been to open an account for him. Get his banking in order---that must be what he intended when he decided to start handing over almost all of his earnings over to her. There had been a rather uncomfortable moment that second time when he had said, quite nonchalantly, that if she saw fit, she could give him an allowance. The prospect had galled her.

Shilling out bills to him, money he'd rightly earned by his own hand?

But Crane grew stubborn and insistent, and with somethingakin to commanding and strict---a tone she had balked at hearing directed toward her---had declared he would not be discussing it any further. Under no circumstances.

Danny's place goes unnoticed.

No one seems interested. New as he had been to Sleepy Hollow, Danny had still been a presence.

Not to mention rumour may have gotten around, in the early days, that Abbie used to slink there in her grief. Or that she still drives by the property now.

She cries less, hurts less. But searches for him.

A new strange anxiety has taken up residence inside of her, that Danny means, to well and truly leave this time. She'll no longer hear his voice, answering her unspoken questions, no longer glimpse him, sometimes it would seem levelling an assessing gaze at Crane while he goes about the house.

 _It's okay,_ she coaxes on the drive home, lingering on the street. _I'm back at work, I have things under control, Crane and I….we're not fighting anymore…..he does take care of me, you wanted him to do that, right? Well he's finally doing it Danny, I'm living, like a job, even without you, so, you don't have to go away now. You're not upsetting anything if you stay. You can **stay** , Danny._

When she receives no answer, she drives back home.

* * *

 

"Abbie" Crane greets.

Every time it's like coming home to some new creature. He got glasses last month, little round spectacles. He's taken to flannel and plaid all of a sudden---perhaps some misguided attempt to resemble a lumberjack----and jeans, boot cut ones----this whole wardrobe turnaround still surprises her. But still he wears the coat. That at least hasn't changed. He keeps his beard fuller, and let's his hair grow messier, sweeping it back from his forehead or tying it up. He bought a make your own beer kit with his 'allowance' the other day.

 _My God_. She thinks. _I'm rooming with a hipster_. But she thinks it fondly, even if it is followed closely by a feeling of melancholy.

Six months to the day Danny's passed, and she can no longer readily call his memory to mind when she looks around. She feels traitorous somehow to his memory. How dare she carry on when she only has a life to live because of him? Maybe that's why he recedes from her.

Is he angry that she's put herself somewhat back together? Affronted maybe that Crane has sidled into a place that was his?

 _But isn't that what you wanted Danny,_ she curses, feeling a headache come on. _You can't turn your back on me now for following orders._

"Abbie?" Crane's voice shatters this internal argument with a spoon thrust in front of her. He raises his brows at her and she tastes the sauce, her mind completely elsewhere and simultaneously neglecting the easy, casual, forgotten familiar intimacy of the gesture and nods, yes its good. Satisfied, although his eyes glint with curiosity he turns back to the kitchen. "You seem troubled"

"I'm losing him Crane."

She hears the spoon clatter back into the pot and the click of knobs turning off. When he emerges his face is wreathed with concern. "I'm….I'm afraid I don't understand Abbie."

"His voice, seeing him. I….I think I'm really losing him this time, for good." Her lip quavers and averting her gaze, she makes a quiet exit, trudging up to her room. 

For once a comforting embrace doesn't seem like enough.

* * *

 

Desperation takes her to the cabin. That Cabin. Their Cabin. Where the fire had gotten too hot before she had shut Daniel out, the first time.

Crane had wanted to come but she had requested he not.

There had been little argument, though she knew how direly he had wanted to oppose her. Her mouth twists a little at that, as she brews her tea, hugs her sweater close and goes out to the edge of the bank, to look out on the lake. This was where he had told her, the first time, his first inkling that he was falling.

"I care a lot about you Mills." he'd said, glancing at her out the corner of his eye, gently turning her towards him. "And I know I could care more. A lot more. Abbie, I want more for us then a hot fling, more than this getaway. Abs I---"

The heavens had opened up then, andshe'd been grateful, instantly drenched and cold, to escape this declaration of his heart that she wasn't prepared to accept.

"And then I did Danny. And then you died." she takes a deep shuddering breath as she checks the ground around her, crossing her ankles, sinks down to sit, gazing off into the horizon. "Danny," she calls. "Danny I know you're out there. Please, answer me."

The wind stirs gently around her.

"Isn't it enough you died? Isn't that far enough for you to go? Do you have to go further Danny, to leave me behind? I….Danny I want to live but I can't lose you, not completely, not entirely. Don't make me let go, please."

"Where's Crane" he asks.

Luke warm and not entirely there he materializes beside her.

"You're a bastard."

He chuckles.

"You are. Why haven't you been answering me?"

"Abs."

"Answer me Danny."

When heturns his gaze on her, and Abbie looks at him fully, she sees a light hovering around him that didn't always before."I haven't been making you let go. You've been doing it, on your own. And it's okay, Abbie." he soothes, resting a hand on her shoulder. "That's how it's supposed to go. That's how it works. You could never really lose me, Abbie. I'll always be there for you." he looks at her wistfully. "You just don't need me as much anymore." his gaze slides away. "To be honest you never did"

"I did."

He seems intent on looking anywhere else but at her.

"Danny. _Danny_ , I did. I didn't know it until you were there, didn't truly feel it until you were gone---but you gave me so much Danny. And I'll always love you for it.....if...if- If you'd only let me keep you--"

He turns swiftly, his phantom hand reaching toward her, tapping her heart. "You can keep me forever, Abs. I heard you." he says, eyes crinkling. "You've got me, Abbie. Right here in your heart, Always will."

She knows what's coming, can feel it but before she can panic, Danny snaps into solidity for one final moment and brushing back strands from her face, his hand gently curling in the fabric of her sweater tugs her closer and kisses her lips one last time.

If he's being honest, he's wanted a chance to do this, for months. To say a parting full of love.

But her grief had been so strong it had been terrifying---he feared tempting her to join him.

Spirit and human tears both, dance and trickle down their cheeks as his arms curl around her and the loss strikes her again and he holds her, shuddering her grief and pain and for the first time she hears him cry. How he worried and feared for her, watching her mourn. That there have been stages of healing on his end, too. That her slow moving on now allows him to do so. That letting herself heal, heals him---frees him.

It seems impossible in the midst of this tide to feel another loosening, and then for the brief warmth of him to turn swiftly cold, and his face begins to fade. He thumbs a tear on her cheek. "Hope he'll forgive me that one." he jokes.

"Danny,"

"Always. Abbie. Always."

He rises from the bank, and the light grows around him, brighter and brighter until it's all she can see but for his face, too brilliantly illuminated to look at head on but she tries to, eyes watering and burning she will look into the sun to see the last of Daniel Reynolds…..for a little while, at least. And then he smiles.

"Hey Abs. Abbie!"

"What do you _want_ Reynolds," she calls, standing, wiping away tears, finding the nerve to smile back, to laugh a little, eager to hear what else he has to say.

"Take care of my man Crane." He winks, flashes his signature beautiful Daniel Reynolds smile, blows her one last kiss. 

And then he's gone.


	16. Thrive

It has only been two days, but upon her return she recognizes Deidre Reynolds car in the driveway. She's barely shut off the car when the door flings open and both of them fly out, as if they've been waiting with their heads cocked, listening for her return.

Deidre surprisingly beats him to her, taking Abbie in a strong bear like grip that staggers her. "Whoa, whoa, hi Deidre, what's, whats going on?"

"I'm just happy to see you, hear you've been doing….better. He'd have wanted that love."

Some small spark of insanity threatens to confess right then and there she just saw the spirit of Danny up at the Cabin and they said partings----but that may not be the picture of healing and health that Deidre subscribes to.

"How'd you hear?" she asks, and feels herself, hears herself….is she, joking? is she being coy? Abbie forgot she was capable of being either. The feeling of her lips curling into a knowing smirk for a moment feels frighteningly alien.

"Who else but that bearded tea pot," she chuckles warmly and Abbie snorts.

"Bearded tea pot!" she crows--- _my God is that my laugh_ \---? now taking in Crane approaching in green checkered plaid, those jeans, and boots, and the coat---thank heavens for that bit of consistency--or else it's very possible she'd never recognize him.

"I'm glad it amuses you." He bends to wrap his arms around her, and it shouldn't be different, given the way they sleep, but it is, here, in high day, with the sun bright, and Mrs. Reynolds there, that he holds her tight, for the first time for no other reason than he wants to, he is welcoming her home.

There is no desperate clutching of fabric, bunching in his hands. There is no urgent scrambling of fingers and tightening pressure ensuring that she is real, that she cannot escape.

Just steady, warm, sure. She doesn't know since when Crane became sure about anything that didn't come out of a book, but maybe working with his hands and a keen eye has taken him out of his head enough that he doesn't over think---he does.

"Welcome home, Abbie."

_Take care of my man Crane,_

She feels her arms come up around his own lanky frame, gripping his coat in her fingers, and leans her head against him, just a little.

She will, God help her, she can feel the cursed inevitable of it coiling around her heart.

When he releases her, he takes her hand. With surety. It seems rather bold, but it would appear he intends to make her love him.

And in that moment Abbie is a little dismayed to find, that with her heart feeling open---that's what this damned feeling has been---he may not have to try all that hard.

* * *

 

Abbie didn't understand how strong her hold had been on Danny until she'd stopped driving by the house. An offer was made on itthe same week she got back from the cabin.

November now, and a fast approaching holiday season upon them, sometimes, just sometimes she thinks she sees glimmers of him. Turning the corner of an aisle at the grocery. Far ahead of her, when she jogs, vanishing when the sun shines too brightly in her eyes. The sadness and grief is a dull, dwindling thing.

She thinks of Danny now with warmth in her heart, rather than the jarring devastation she had courted so regularly before. It's absurd really, when and how she thinks of him.

She thought of Danny on Halloween. They had ghoul trouble, naturally. It was the first Witness like demand that had been made of her in half a year. First thing her and Crane had had to battle with over that grieving period. It was strange because their game was off. She'd gotten use to Danny fighting by her side, in a way. Their rhythm. She'd also gotten use to fighting by herself.

Making up for the partner she didn't have, she supposes. More aggressive, more dangerous, and sometimes a little more cautiously, because Danny was always out for her safety, after, when he'd joined the group. They don't strategize and consult quite the same way that they did before.

They knock heads, almost instantly when they burst into the archives trying to sort out a solution. She's been making decisions for over a year. Crane's hell bent on making up for lost time. In the past few weeks, they'd been bordering so close on civil, close, repairing, how they were before,that the speed at which their voices rise to a quarrel is nothing short of astounding.

They don't even hear when the door creaks open.

It went for Abbie first.

Knocked her straight across the room, slumping her over like a rag doll. With sheer anger and force Crane had shot his arm forward at the thing, squeezing its wind pipe with both hands, strangling it to the ground, until it gave up the fight and then melted into greenish brown sludge, coating his fingers. And then he went to her.

She knew she would feel this come morning, the way everything ached as he'd scooped her up in his arms.

She knew everything would officially, well and truly change come morning, after, when she is too stiff, creaky, and wincing with pain to remove her own clothes. The moment when Crane gets up the daring to caress her cheek. "Abbie" he rumbles.

"Thanks for saving me,"

"I dare say, Master Reynolds would be cross with us both if something happened to you." he said solemnly, breath puffing across her face and her eyes had drifted open enough to gaze into his blue ones. Shifting tide blue, really, sunny summer day clear, and winter lake dark and fathomless like the sea.

"Crane---"

"I'd be rather cross with _myself_  should something happen to you." he insisted, and his voice took on a sort of hoarse edge. "You flew across that room tonight, and I saw my life flash before my eyes."

"I'm fine---"

He shook her. " _Don't you get it_?" he asked, eyes darting all over her face. " _You_ , are my _life_ , Abbie. And I'm not ready to lose you again. I'm not ready to die, all over, again."

She was shaking then, burning up under the heat of his gaze.

She thought of when Danny had helped her dress after a rough night and she'd been injured, how she'd asked him to stay.

When Crane's fingers deftly undid the buttons on her shirt she thought of clarity.

When care won out over sensibility, when she accepted the small offering to leap and be afraid and fragile and vulnerable, with Danny.

When he reaches to gently push the shirt off her shoulders, mindful of the way she hisses with discomfort as she moves---she grabs Crane's hand. "You don't wanna lose me don't let go."

She thinks of Danny, when Crane's lips touch hers, brief and soft. On how a moment like this began a love that had healed and repaired her after the wreckage left behind of this same man, Ichabod Crane. That would tear her up when she lost it.

But she'd do it again. Because she felt things then, with Danny, wonderful, beautiful, forever things that changed her. She was loved. She felt. She lived.

And as Crane pulls away, she grabs his collar pulling him closer, their lips colliding again with more intent, but slowly, tenderly.

And damn it, she's going to keep living.

She's done being afraid.


	17. Precious Reckless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> glimpse to future, and then back to the night of Abbie and Crane's first mutual kiss.

 

In all honesty,a part of Abbie had still expected him to flee in shocked dismay when she finally let him go.

Pleasant surprise then, that he had cupped her cheek, cradled her to his chest, and forgot all together about getting her ready for bed and clambered in the bed with her and kissed her face, again and again, whispering countless incoherent things. And when she'd reached up to touch his face her fingers had come away wet before he grabbed her hand and kissed each finger tip.

"Please," he begs. "Oh Abbie, please."

Laughter bubbles up inside her because something about this seems vaguely unhinged.

"You went, so far away from me," he whimpers, choking back sobs. "You were so far, I didn't….I hoped, I prayed, but I could never know for sure that you'd come back,"

"You left first," she counters quietly, a statement of fact.

"But never again. Please Abbie let me be close to you, this close to you, always. I love you. Please let me do it."

Her eyes brim with tears. "You see me." she says, holding his face. "You're finally here,"

"To stay." he finishes. "Let me love you, Abbie. With every triumph and healing and scare and hurt in me, I will never with hold from you."

"Please" she says softly. "Please, kiss me."

So he kisses her, heavily, as if she were a boat at sea and he meant to be her anchor.

* * *

April, seems too soon even after all these months, but she's there, nonetheless, staring down at the betraying strip.

Positive.

* * *

 

It had been two weeks after that night, precisely. Crane came home late. It's been dark out since five, and winter crashed upon Sleepy Hollow early and vengeful. There was a storm still blustering outside, cars losing control and she hated to think it but prime weather for people to go missing. Conditions the way they were made it impossible to conduct proper searches. And absurdly, when the clock chimed ten, she had her phone poised to dial Foster to do that very thing. Launch a search for Crane.

But the door banged open at exactly ten o one, and there he was, red eared, red nosed, dusting snow from the toque and coat and all of the other modern trappings of warmth he'd had to acquire. His beard was so heavily layered in snow he could have passed for Santa. "Oh Crane," she tsked, rising from her seat, dropping the death grasped phone and going to him at the door, helping him shirk out of all the cold wet things and then touching his chilled face and reaching up on toes. "I was worried," she huffed. His eyes had closed, relishing the feeling of her warm breath on his face. Her proximity.

"I do believe my lips are frozen," he chattered, giving her a shivering sly smile.

"Come here" she'd offered, and then kissed him. With warmth and gentleness and far away, a taste of desperation, relief he'd made it home. That he hadn't vanished, that he was back here with her. "The roads are awful," she breathes when they break apart. "You should have stayed at the shop"

"And risk getting snowed in? Away from you? Not while I draw breath will I ever be separated from you again if it is in my power to be otherwise."His kiss then was solid and almost forceful. As if he meant to drum the information into her thick skull. I'm not leaving. Never again. Never repeating that mistake.

"You're cold," she whispers when he releases her. "You're going to get sick, I made soup, I'll just warm it up," stepping back and turning toward the kitchen when his hand lanced out, wrapping securely and firmly across her wrist.

" _You_ warm me up," he commanded softly, his eyes fierce and dark, but there was a pleading note in his voice. " _Take care of me_."

The answer wasn't past her lips before he'd reeled her back in, slamming her against him, hard, and her head tipped up hands in his hair and then backing her up into the sofa, over the ends of it, both of them a clumsy mess before she got her wits and was above him, unbuttoning his shirt, kissing him softly as she worked. "Abbie"

She paused, meeting his eyes. Taking in the situation, where they were, the long arduous path to get here. "I have feelings for you, but that's no secret now, is it?"

"Abbie---"

"Ssh" she threw off her t-shirt, unhooked her bra and unbuttoned his jeans, reaching for him, beginning to gently rock her body against his. "For the first time, Ichabod, I'd dare say I have a name for them."

She can feel the heat of him, the way his breath ramps up, how his hands come up to grip her hips. "Name them," he begs. "Please, I need---"

"I love you" she breathes. He gasps, water glittering in his eyes.

" _Grace_ ,"

"Sssh," she kisses away the tiny happy tear trickling down his face, tastes the salt of it before moving back to his mouth, kissing him deeply, tugging his bottom lip gently with her teeth before she pulls away and whispers, her body flushed and wanting his, "I've got you"

Joined, she begins to move.

It had seemed, in a way, impossible to stave off the inevitable business of twining their bodies.

More from need than passion, at first. More of a rigorous inventory of parts, counted by lips and teeth and tongue. Double, triple checking for themselves and the other that this, this long awaited, denied, buried and revived moment between them, was real.

A sigh was good, meant they were breathing.

A moan, that something was done right.

A profanity, earned a smarmy smile---later, when the newness stopped being frightening and started to carry a new thrill.

The others name, meant they saw the other, that they were real to them.

In the end, all we really want out of life, this waking dream, is to be real concrete, to matter, to someone.

They made sure they mattered. Regularly. Steady love made their bodies glow and hum and happiness, the elusive imp, was caught between them now, unable to escape. Butnow.

Her eyes mist. Too soon, this is absolutely too soon.

How had she been so reckless?


	18. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THE END 
> 
> HUGE THANK YOU to EVERYONE being with me on this! all my love until my next one!

Christmas eve, the nursery has been decorated with a makeshift bureau desk, and there's a suit jacket there, for ages 6-9 months. The shelves burst with books, her favourites, his, Danny's. There's a hand crafted doll, that looks just like him. Something Crane managed to carve with his own hands; Danny's likeness---it stole her breath and broke her all at once with the accuracy and beauty of it.

And in the crib, her sweetest, most tender gift.

"We'll call her Daniella," Crane had murmured, kissing her temple as he'd looked down at this perfect milk chocolate drop, eyes glittering brown and small, hair of downy slick curls. "Danny, for short?"

 _Danny_. She'd nodded tearfully. " _Yes, I love you, Ichabod_. **_Thank you._** "

"He's a part of us, Abbie, and I am glad to honour him for what he's done. Where it not for his sacrifice I would not have you. I would nothave her." he gazes fondly at the sleeping babe.

She sits by the crib and tells her little girl stories. Of a kind generous man that gave his everything so she could have everything, her god father in spirit, Daniel Reynolds. Of a hard headed, awful, wonderful man, that she will grow to call father, Ichabod Crane.

* * *

"Hey there baby girl," Danny coos, waving at the infant. "You're as beautiful as your mother." 

"It would appear the veil is especially thin on the eve of a New Year." Crane declares, announcing his and Abbie's presence. An arm draped over her shoulder, she leans into him and they both look on their visitor fondly. Daniel lifts his head to regard them, eyes twinkling. "Happy New Year, Master Reynolds."

"Happy New Year Danny," Abbie says warmly.

Dannygrins, then turns his face back on the little girl, named for him. "Take care of these two, alright?"

Baby Danny smiles brightly at him.

* * *

They have two more, over  the years, married, after Danny turned one. April wedding, a symbolic date, marking the loss of one and when another was found. A date now charged with the duty of memory and celebrating beginnings. Pretty little girl held on her hip, Danny had squealed delight when her Crane kissed Abbie, soft and sweet. "I love you," he rumbled.

"And I you, Crane. You're mine now, remember that," she teased.

"Eternity," his eyes twinkled with promise _"Eternity_."

Their second child, whom they gave Ichabod's middle name, Alex, and the last, Bethany, who they sometimes affectionately call Betsy.

Daniel Reynolds echoes through their lives. A guide in loving selflessly, fearlessly. A life offered for them to have their chance.

Together the Mills-Cranes love, heal, grow, remember and cherish, and keep the memory of Daniel Reynolds, alive.


End file.
